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Appalling   Listen
adjective
Appalling  adj.  Such as to appall; as, an appalling accident.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Appalling" Quotes from Famous Books



... Tapleyism in me and come out strong under difficulties. I think I may confidently say that no man ever saw me out of heart or ever heard a complaining word from me even when our prospects were gloomiest. We were sadly crippled by cholera, and it was almost appalling to me to find that out of twenty-seven officers I could only muster fifteen for the operations of the attack. However, it was done,—and after it ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton

... the student of human nature, but profitless otherwise. I was ushered into low, dark chambers, small and dreary, looking towards the sunless north, which I was assured were delightful and even elegant. I was taken up to the top of tall houses, through a smell of cabbage that was appalling, to find empty and dreary rooms, from which I fled in fright. We were visited by so many people who had chambers to rent, that we were impressed with the idea that all Munich was to let; and yet, when we visited the places offered, we found they were only to be let alone. One of the frauen who did ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... the offending sleeves I did not think they were so appalling—only two white satin puffs held in with straps of narrow black velvet ribbon. On a black corsage they could not be so dreadful, especially as the fashion now is sleeves puffed ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... ludicrous, is it, when woman voluntarily stops and becomes the agent of her own degradation, and with her own hands builds barriers against her own advancement; piling up opposition, Pelion upon Ossa, when the majority against her, even in New York and New England, is already appalling? And then for us to be referred to the teachings and experiences of the past for lessons in compromise, cold, calculating compromise, such as Abolitionists ever blasted with the breath of their nostrils, and scourged from their presence with fiery indignation! The Equal Rights Association is not ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... said John, gravely; "besides," he added, "the state of the roof is simply appalling. Many of the beams are actually rotten. Then there are the drains; they are on a system that should not be tolerated in these days. Nothing has been done for over sixty years, and I can ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture

... wear a surtout. It is the most unnatural, and therefore the most awkward dress that ever was invented. On a tall man, if he be thin, it appears like a cossack-trouser on a stick leg; if it be buttoned, it makes his leanness and lankness still more appalling and absurd; if it be open, it appears to be no part of his costume, and leads us to suppose that some elongated habit-maker is giving us a specimen of that rare ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 326, August 9, 1828 • Various

... myself, or wait until aid came, I turned over in my mind for a few minutes, as I examined the space above me. The noise of the waters, and agitation of my mind, were again beginning to render my situation more and more perilous, and I felt there was no time to lose. It was far more appalling in the glare of day than the cloud of night, and, with a desperate energy, I made the attempt, clinging to what I could grasp. I know not how I succeeded, until I lay stretched upon the verge of the gulf, secure from danger. I dared not ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... down my cowardice, and, looking both of them as squarely in the face as I knew how, passed out of the open into the appalling ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

... was no getting away from it. He would make this appalling viscus beat and throb before the shrinking journalists—no uncle with a big watch and a little baby ever harped upon it so relentlessly; whatever evasion they attempted he set aside. He "gloried in his love," he said, and compelled them ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells

... raised in England by taxation has, in a time not exceeding two long lives, been multiplied forty-fold, is strange, and may at first sight seem appalling. But those who are alarmed by the increase of the public burdens may perhaps be reassured when they have considered the increase of the public resources. In the year 1685, the value of the produce of the soil far exceeded the value of all the other fruits ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... see the children—such sturdy limbs, bright fearless eyes, and glowing faces. They have abundance of excellent food. Each cottager has one or two cows, and the little ones take these out to pasture on the hills, so they are in the open air nearly all day: but their ignorance is appalling! Many of them had never even been christened; there was no school or church within thirty miles or more, and although the parents seemed all tidy, decent people, and deplored the state of things, they were powerless to help it. The father and elder sons work hard all day; the mother ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... impact or by a radio signal. It was, however, deflected markedly from its course by the force of the blast, so that instead of striking the Forlorn Hope in direct central impact, its head merely touched the apex of the mirror-plated wedge. That touch was enough. There was another appalling concussion, another blinding glare, and the entire front quarter of the terrestrial vessel had gone to ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... thing save this new object of terror. Count Robert upon this seized on a massive wooden stool, which was the only offensive weapon on which he could lay his hand, and, marking at those eyes which now reflected the blaze of fire, and which had recently seemed so appalling, he discharged against them this fragment of ponderous oak, with a force which less resembled human strength than the impetus with which an engine hurls a stone. He had employed his instant of time so well, and his aim was so true, that the missile went right to the mark and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... same tree two more bundles of acute angles sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead, as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I stood horror-struck, ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... access to that of the prison; there was no restriction on visitors, who brought him presents just as they chose; and he became a kind of fashion with the Opposition. Jeremy Bentham came and played at battledore and shuttlecock with him—an almost appalling idea, for it will not do to trust too implicitly to Leigh Hunt's declaration that Jeremy's object was to suggest "an improvement in the constitution of shuttlecocks." The Examiner itself continued undisturbed, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... the good vicar, still distressed at being aroused so early, came to the church. Had it been less pitiful and pathetic, it would have been most comical, the number of times the old vicar dropped his book, forgot the names, the appalling mistakes he made, the nervous hesitation of his manner. Sometimes Lord Chandos felt inclined to say hard, hot words; again, he could not repress a smile. But at length, after trembling and hesitating, the vicar gave the final benediction, and ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay

... a most appalling thing happened. The district in which the old don lived was swept by a plague of unusual virulence. De Leon succumbed before he had time to make any disposition of his property, even write a line to his daughter. His Yankee overseer in charge of the mine was also ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... the play. Nay, he suddenly found two, three, and (for what he knew) as many as four profligate economies in that title-page and those Reflections, and he uses the language of distress and perplexity at this appalling discovery. ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... young man had ever seen; Long Island Sound was like a pocket. The passengers—those who did not go to their state-rooms at once—sat in the cabin reading, or dozing on the chairs and sofas. A few men stayed out on deck for an hour or two, smoking; but at last they too went in. The darkness was appalling. The officer on the bridge blew his steam fog-whistle every few minutes, and kept his lanterns hung out; but they must have been invisible ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... monsters, whose bodies were covered with scales; hissing, wriggling snakes clustered round their heads instead of hair; their hands were of brass; their teeth resembled the tusks of a wild boar; and their whole aspect was so appalling, that they are said to have turned into ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens

... of their readers. In sum, the student may congratulate himself that a continuous study of the Northern newspapers for the period of the Civil War is unnecessary, for their size and diffuseness are appalling. ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes

... Greaves of Fulbourn had long since provided a reward of ten pounds for "the Junior Bachelor of Trinity College who wrote the best essay on the Conduct and Character of William the Third." As the prize is annual, it is appalling to reflect upon the searching analysis to which the motives of that monarch must by this time have been subjected. The event, however, may be counted as an encouragement to the founders of endowments; for, amidst the succession of juvenile critics whose attention was by his ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... over their lessons, might be heard in a drowsy summer's day, like the hum of a beehive; interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace or command, or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Ichabod Crane's scholars certainly ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving

... discourage all the recruits who see it from firing live rifle-grenades in actual warfare. On the other hand, even where the rifle-grenades are only used as dummies, the waste of valuable ammunition is simply appalling. A Hales rifle-grenade used to cost 25s. and it came down to 15s. a little later, but once fired as a dummy it was not much use to fire again. Dummies could have been made for about 1s. at the most, but of course no one ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley

... National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. This Society keeps five hundred workers incessantly busy, day and night, preventing cruelty to little English children. Go in, and listen to some of the stories that the inspectors can tell you. They can tell you of appalling sufferings inflicted on children, of bruised bodies and lacerated limbs and poisoned minds, not only in the submerged quarters but in comfortable houses by English people of education and position. Buy a ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke

... years since a fire of this kind is said to have spread until it inclosed within its lines the lake and the valley, as far as one could see, surrounding the village with a network of flame, which at night was quite appalling in its aspect. The danger, however, was not so great as it appeared, as there was everywhere a cleared space between the burning forest and the little town. At times, however, very serious accidents result ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various

... After a consultation, Drs. Gazzam and Fahnestock thought she could not live more than four weeks; but Spear said she might linger three months. This blanched the cheek of each one. Three months of such unremitting pain, steadily on the increase, was appalling; but mother faced the prospect without a murmur, willing to bear by God's grace what He should inflict, and to wait His good time for deliverance. I was filled with self-reproach, for I should have ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm

... had weighed and preferred being under what canvas they could bear. At last we were within two cables' lengths of the beach, and even at this distance from it we were surrounded with the breakers; the surf broke many feet high, and roared as it rushed up with a velocity that was appalling, dashing the foam right to the door of Bramble's cottage, which was forty or fifty yards higher than it generally gained to even in very bad weather. We now lowered our sails, stowed them in the boat, and got our oars to pass, backing against the surf to prevent it from forcing ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... emotion, but it was too great; and his nerves were so immensely staggered by the trial that he began to shed tears. He had caught sight of the appalling truth, all of a sudden, as when at night one half sees a landscape under ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc

... rustic churls are too appalling. And serve me right for keeping such. Henceforth I really must contrive To have a ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente

... mother and child was absent. This is well illustrated in the case of a certain slave mother, who, when dying, was asked how she felt about leaving her children and who replied: "O missis, you will take care of them; I don't mind them." It has been truthfully said that the most appalling feature of slavery was the lack of family life suffered by ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... were covered with them, sticking out like porcupine's quills, and they had entered the plank with such force, that it required a very strong arm to pull them out again. We lost some men by them; the effect of a hundred spears hurtling through the air at the same time was singularly appalling to our men, who were not accustomed the sound, especially during the night. I heard several of the sailors observe afterwards that they "did not like that at all," and I am sure they would have infinitely preferred to have been met with fire-arms. ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... who did not know the meaning of fear. With a wound in his shoulder McKessock took one gun out of the forward line, mounted it in rear of a ruin about two hundred feet behind its original position and began ripping holes through the German ranks that were appalling. He was finally overcome from loss of blood. Major Osborne, badly gassed, fought on with a wound in the shoulder till a bullet caught him in the face. He was put into a communication trench from which he ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie

... when I no longer expected any solution to the problem set before me for my grief, a grief, too, that was both sterile and mortal, a day came on which I had a conversation with my mother so startling and appalling that to this hour my heart stands still when I think of it. I have spoken of dates; among them is ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... be my England of the senses and the understanding, and night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams.' Only a fantasy, and yet how he bends Nature to suit the curve of his own temperament. And who has not felt the involuntary exhilaration, appalling from its very depth, that possessed him, crossing a bare common, on a bleak October afternoon, sunless and chill, with gray winds sweeping by—'I was glad to the brink of fear.' An intense emotion ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... appalling clearness that which before she had uncertainly experienced, the immodest character of that mother's beauty. With the pearls in her fair hair, with neck and arms bare in a corsage the delicate green tint of which ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... little it deserves the name! Our English storms are nothing but babies compared with the appalling blasts which sweep down upon us from the north. In summer the furious seas dash against the cliffs as if to protect them from the desecration of human encroachment. The fine snow filters in between the roof and ceiling ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding

... repeatedly a witness, by the side of the Princesse de Lamballe, of the appalling scenes of the bonnet rouge, of murders a la lanterne, and of numberless insults to the unfortunate Royal Family of Louis XVI., when the Queen was generally selected as the most marked victim of malicious indignity. Having had the honour ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... through the open vestibule, the sounds from the streets came louder and more clear. That awful cry of "Death" echoed with appalling distinctness, and to Dea Flavia's strained senses it seemed as if they were mingled with others, more awesome mayhap, but equally ominous of "The praefect of Rome! Where is the praefect of ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... poured in upon them a tremendous fire. This they met manfully, and, though some fell, the others seemed the more determined. But, just as they were beginning the attack in good earnest, a concealed body of Indians rose upon them, and the appalling war ...
— Whig Against Tory - The Military Adventures of a Shoemaker, A Tale Of The Revolution • Unknown

... upon the waves, elongated or squat, as the waves stretched or humped themselves. The beam from the lighthouse strode rapidly across the water. Infinite millions of miles away powdered stars twinkled; but the waves slapped the boat, and crashed, with regular and appalling solemnity, against the rocks. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... of letters we found waiting for us here in Edinburgh was, if possible, more appalling than in Glasgow. Among those from persons whom you would be interested in hearing of, I may mention, a very kind and beautiful one from the Duchess of Sutherland, and one also from the Earl of Carlisle, ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... the frost, and the pelting of the pitiless sleet and snow destroys the beauty at a very early age, and if in infancy their personal advantages are remarkable, their ugliness at an advanced age is no less so, for then it is loathsome and appalling:—"He wanted but the dark and kingly crown to have represented the monster who opposed the progress of Lucifer whilst careering in burning arms and infernal glory to the outlet of his hellish prison." In our own country a number of Gipsies sit as models, for which ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith

... in security, the startling cry of "Fire! fire?—the ship is on fire!" breaks in an appalling sound on the ear. Every one springs instantly to their feet, and every possible means are resorted to, to quench the flames, but all in vain; the flames rush on, and in agony the passengers and crew await their ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna

... accidents in the United States, including railway accidents, reaches the immense total of sixty thousand killed and many times that number injured. A most appalling waste of life and ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... chanced, was about thirty-five or forty feet distant from the enemy, as he lunged out, black and appalling, from behind the juniper. At the same time the ram was not more than twenty or twenty-five feet distant, straight above the lamb, in a direction at right angles to the path of the bear. The ewe looked up with a startled bleat, wheeled, sprang ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts

... Filled with these appalling thoughts, they crouched upon their hands and knees, now peering cautiously through the leaves of the aloes, and now whispering to each other the various plans of escape that suggested themselves. But all these plans ended in the faint hope that the bears might make ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... congregate at the Algonquin for supper, I noticed Elsie and Mrs. Janis, Irving Berlin, Frances Carson, and Desiree Bibble who looked appalling in probably the rudest hat that has ever been worn by ...
— Terribly Intimate Portraits • Noel Coward

... her husband. And it's awful that I, who can't understand how any woman could be so wicked as to do that, should be so terribly like her. I feel as though it had something to do with this appalling thing happening to me. Perhaps her sins are being visited on me." She held the lapels of his coat and looked tenderly, yearningly, in his face. "And I could bear it better if—But oh, my Ian! I can't bear to think of you left with something ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... appalling, and consequent upon the suddenly-impressed knowledge that, in spite of the fact that there was about a mile and a half of space of which an infinitesimally small portion was occupied by danger, they were gliding through the black darkness dead on to that little ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn

... coil of thin strong cord in his hand. Approaching the sleeping men on tiptoe, he looked down on them for a moment, wondering whether the drug had done its work sufficiently well for him to proceed. The question was settled for him with a suddenness that nearly unnerved him. An appalling clang of the bell, a startling sound that seemed loud enough to wake the dead, made him spring nearly to the ceiling. He dropped his rope and clung to the door in a panic of dread, his palpitating heart nearly suffocating him with its wild beating, staring with affrighted eyes at the ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr

... triumphant strength of youth. But if at the same period he had attempted a novel, the world undoubtedly would have found out how very young he was. He would have been incapable of slicing a cross-section clean through the vastitude of human life, of seeing it whole, and of representing the appalling intricacy of its interrelations. On the other hand, most of the mature men who have been wise enough to do the latter, have shown themselves incapable of focussing their minds steadily upon a single point of experience. Wholeness and steadiness of vision—few are the men who, like Sophocles, have ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton

... she came down with the most appalling crash on to something hard and nearly jarred the senses out of us. Next the saloon was whirling round and round and yet being carried forward, and we felt air blowing upon us. Then our senses left us. As I clasped Tommy to my side, whimpering and licking my face, my last thought was ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard

... articles being fearlessly given. The responsibility incurred was immense, but the assertions of the journal were so well founded upon fact that they were universally accepted as accurately representing the appalling state of the food supply. As instances may be cited, that of thirty-four samples of coffee only three were pure, chicory being present in thirty-one, roasted corn in twelve, beans and potato flour each in one; of thirty-four samples ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... stave, and holding on with one hand by the prison wall, exerted all their skill and force to cast these fire-brands on the roof, or down into the yards within. In many instances their efforts were successful; which occasioned a new and appalling addition to the horrors of the scene: for the prisoners within, seeing from between their bars that the fire caught in many places and thrived fiercely, and being all locked up in strong cells for the night, began to know that they were in danger of being burnt alive. This terrible ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens

... think that I could work up sufficient nerve to appear in public muzzled in this way. I knew from reading how many million microbes of different kinds there are inhabiting every cubic inch of air, and it was indeed appalling to think what even one of them would do for me if it chanced to hit me in a vulnerable spot. I did the best I could and kept my windows open wide both day and night, that some of these little imps of Satan might ride out on the breeze. On a cold day ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs

... What appalling consequences were to be apprehended from so rash an act, she herself could not have told. But she was certain that if Amy sneezed, her own self-control would give way, and she would scream. "Smother it," ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... who sign Covenants and form volunteer armies at home, have in them the fixed belief that no one in the world is equal to them or can subdue them. It seems an absurd and arrogant faith. But there is this to be said. They remained just as convinced of their own strength after their appalling experience north of the Somme as they were when they shouted for Sir Edward Carson in the streets of Belfast. Men who believe in their invincibility the day after they have been driven back, with their wounds fresh and their bones aching with weariness, are men whom it will be very difficult ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham

... speculates about mama. He feels quite sure about papa. Anyhow this particular mot attracted no comment. Doubtless the young lady was as far above suspicion as the wife of Caesar; but she and her companions in this particular set have an appalling frankness of speech and a callousness in regard to discussing the more personal facts of human existence that is startling to a middle-aged ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... was a man who could do several things very well indeed, and caricature was only one of these things. In Paris he would certainly have made a name and a fortune as a caricaturist. They have more liberty there. Witness Rouveyre's admirable and appalling sketch of Sarah Bernhardt in the current Mercure de France. I never met Ospovat, but I was intimate with some of his friends while he was at South Kensington. In those days I used to hear "what Ospovat thought" about everything. He must have been listened ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett

... the Senior Surgeon's features crinkled wincingly from brow to chin as though struggling vainly to retreat from the appalling proximity ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... have paid me back in kind; had I not been magnanimous? I climbed to the top of the chalet, and my eyes followed him on the road. Ah! my dear Renee, he vanished from my sight with an appalling swiftness. ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... that her respect had diminished. She really loved at last, and so well that the idea of discovery by this man whose wholesomeness was the trait of character which most potently attracted her, was too appalling to be contemplated. The chance of discovery would be enhanced, she recognized, by the absence ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer

... the suburbs—appalling but you've got to go through them to get to London. Were I a rich man, I would follow Spring round the World. In that way I should be able to smile through life like those people who, in snapshots from the Riviera, seem composed principally ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... At this appalling moment, Joyce appeared on the ridge of the roof, shouting, in a voice that might have been heard to the farthest point in ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper

... and rivets the attention, even in stone, close by is one of the finest and most perfectly-preserved female mummies I ever beheld,—hideous in its uninjured state, grinning fearfully with its rows of fine ivory teeth a little broken, glaring with its still prominent eyes, and appalling with its blackened skin drawn over the high cheekbones. Why might not this carefully-attended and richly-adorned queen be the beautiful and fatal "serpent of old Nile"—the ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... will doubtless gain an intensified force from the terribly intensified meaning of the words that 'the night cometh when no man can work,' yet when at times I think, as think at times I must, of the appalling contrast between the hallowed glory of that creed which once was mine, and the lonely mystery of existence as now I find it,—at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoid the sharpest pang of which ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... and an orchestra of one hundred and forty, in which figure eight flutes, seven clarinets, six horns, four Wagner tubas. Little wonder the impression was a stupendous one. There were episodes of great beauty, dramatic moments, and appalling climaxes. As Schoenberg has decided both in his teaching and practice that there are no unrelated harmonies, cacophony was not absent. Another thing: this composer has temperament. He is cerebral, as few before him, yet in this work the bigness of the design ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... were filmed by a growing drowsiness when Wapi drew silently away and slunk suspiciously into the night. There was no yapping foxes here, forty miles from the coast. An almost appalling silence hung under the white stars, a silence broken only by the low and distant moaning the wind always makes on the barrens. Wapi listened to it, and he sniffed with his gray muzzle turned to the north. And then he whined. Had Dolores or Peter seen him or ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood

... joined our party to provide us with game. Deliberately, he walks up to within ten feet of the bear who is growling at the foot of my tree. Bruin turns on his new foe, and rising on his hind feet, with appalling howlings, prepares for battle. But in an instant the old man's rifle is at his shoulder. His eye runs quickly through the sights, an explosion follows, and the bear is dead. The hunter knew well where to strike a vital point. Satisfied ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... done is a threat stimulating to some, but appalling to others; and Averil was of the latter class, with no desire for such a spectacle, be it what it might. She did not apologize for the trifle—possible ink, a spot of wax, a borrowed book, were far beneath an apology; but she made up ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge

... and the chief matter that worried Mr. Prohack. He regarded it sardonically as rather a lark; but he was worried to think of the girl making a fool of herself with her mother. Her mother was demonstrably in the right. To yield to the chit's appalling heartlessness would be bad tactics and it would be humiliating. Nevertheless Mr. Prohack had directed the taxi-driver to the dance-studio at Putney. On the way it suddenly occurred to him, almost with a shock, that he was a rich man, secure from material ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... famous Essay on Population appeared, and in 1803 a second greatly enlarged. Its leading proposition, supported by much learning, is that while population increases approximately in a geometrical ratio, the means of subsistence do so in an arithmetical ratio only, which, of course, opened up an appalling prospect for the race. It necessarily failed to take into account the then undreamed-of developments whereby the produce of the whole world has been made available for all nations. The work gave rise to a great deal of controversy, much of it based ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... seemed to the quaking boys, had the desert night seemed so black. The stars were shining, to be sure, but the very heavens seemed further away, and the silence was appalling. Nervous, excited, dreading the ordeal, each boy waited for the other to propose that they give up their wild-goose chase; but neither was willing to acknowledge his cowardice first, so they stumbled fearfully on, clutching each other's hands to keep from falling, they told themselves, ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown

... her—the strangeness of his voice, the terrible hardness of his face, gray and blood-stained, the something appalling and commanding in the way he had spoken. He passed her quickly on his way to the telephone. Her lips moved; she tried to speak; one of her hands went to her throat. He was calling Miriam Kirkstone's number! And now she saw that his hands, too, ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... It's appalling!" cried Marcia. "Can't we get him to go away?" Then she looked at her mother uneasily. "I do wish, mother, you hadn't put that notice of Arthur's meeting into the Witness without consulting him. Why, you didn't ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... that their prisoner began to rage out abusive words in Dutch, so loudly that in the exasperation he felt, Ingleborough raised his right foot and delivered four kicks with appalling vigour and rapidity—appalling to the receiver, who uttered a series of yells for help in sound honest English, struggling the while to escape, but with his progress barred by West, who closed up and ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn

... all with shirts over their outward and usual garments. As soon as the moon, after having gained a greater elevation in the sky, began to diffuse a clearer lustre on the earth, we may justly say that it would be difficult to witness so strange and appalling a spectacle. The white appearance of their persons, caused by the shirts which they wore in the manner we have stated, for this peculiar occasion, when contrasted with their blackened visages, gave them more the character of demons than of men, with whom ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton

... responsible than some noxious wild beast. Among the terrible facts of life none is indeed more terrible than this. Every believer in the wise government of the world must have sometimes realised with a crushing or at least a staggering force the appalling injustices of life as shown in the enormous differences in the distribution of unmerited happiness and misery. But the disparity of moral circumstances is not less. It has shaken the faith of many. It has even led some to dream of a possible Heaven for the vicious where those ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... of her determination that death for both of them shall end an impossible situation. This, however, we do not learn until later; for the moment the theme conveys little special meaning to us. It is when we hear the drama a second time that its appalling tragic force is felt. Isolda tells Brangaena to command Tristan to come to the pavilion. Kurvenal, his servant, sings a scoffing song, in which all the sailors join, in spite of Tristan's endeavour to stop them. ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... some little jumble of mementos which somehow, without any will of his, had got associated with the more important papers. Dick looked over the bundle as if through the eyes of that man who would go through them after his death, finding out this appalling mystery. The man would be delighted, though it might not be a pleasant discovery—it might (Dick went on imagining to himself) throw a horrible doubt, as old What's-his-name said, upon the standing of his widow, upon the rights of his child—but the ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant

... securely prisoned from the cradle to the grave, he has made a discovery. If the world does not please you you can change it. Determine to alter it at any price, and you can change it altogether. You may change it to something sinister and angry, to something appalling, but it may be you will change it to something brighter, something more agreeable, and at the worst something much more interesting. There is only one sort of man who is absolutely to blame for his own misery, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... now reached a point that was almost unendurable. The emptiness at the stomach and the pangs of hunger had given way to the fierce pains and the appalling weakness that come to those perishing ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon

... mind, and that he feels that as in the struggle between liberty and slavery, the views of the one party have been laid bare with their success, so the exertions on the other side should become more strenuous, and a more positive stand be made against the avowed and appalling encroachments ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... went to see 'Faust' played at the little country theater: it was done with scarcely any means of pictorial effect, except a few old curtains, and a blue light or two. But the night on the Brocken was nevertheless extremely appalling to me,—a strange ghastliness being obtained in some of the witch scenes merely by fine management of gesture and drapery; and in the phantom scenes, by the half-palsied, half-furious, faltering or fluttering past of phantoms stumbling ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin

... remember anybody who might not be of some definite use to him. Such, at least, was one of the impressions you made on me when I met you last summer at a dinner given by our friends the Pelhams. Among the other things in you that struck me were the blatant pomposity of your manner, your appalling flow of cheap platitudes, and your hoggish lack of ideas. It is such men as you that lower the tone of public life. And I am sure that in writing to you thus I am but expressing what is felt, without distinction ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... in Paris," said Madame d'Estrees, with some hesitation, "when she was a student at the Conservatoire. She and I had some common acquaintance. And now—frankly, I daren't offend her. She has the most appalling temper!—and she sticks ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... and its mystery had captured everything and every sound—had left nothing free but the unexpected that seemed to hover about one, ready to stretch out its stealthy hand in a touch sudden, familiar, and appalling. Even the careless disposition of the young ex-officer of an opium-clipper was affected by the ominous aspect of the hour. What was this vessel? What were those people? What would happen to-morrow? To the yacht? To himself? He felt suddenly without any additional ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... assemblage; in a silence as of the grave each man upheld a black torch that flared weirdly in the shadows of the synagogue. A ram's horn sounded shrill and terrible, and to its elemental music the anathema was launched, the appalling curse withdrawing every human right from the outlaw, living or dead, and the congregants, extinguishing their torches, cried, "Amen." And in a spiritual darkness as black, Manasseh tottered home to sit with his wife on the floor and bewail the death of their Joseph, while a death-light ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... that we were to die. I sat down upon the step of the door, and watched the awful scene in silence. The fire was raging in the cedar-swamp immediately below the ridge on which the house stood, and it presented a spectacle truly appalling. From out the dense folds of a canopy of black smoke, the blackest I ever saw, leaped up continually red forks of lurid flame as high as the tree tops, igniting the branches of a group of tall pines that had ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... than he was, and he dared not turn his head; it seemed to him that he was keeping his adversary off with his eyes rather more than with his point. Lieut. Feraud crouched and bounded with a fierce tigerish agility fit to trouble the stoutest heart. But what was more appalling than the fury of a wild beast, accomplishing in all innocence of heart a natural function, was the fixity of savage purpose man alone is capable of displaying. Lieut. D 'Hubert in the midst of his ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... by all means!" Mrs. Bundercombe interrupted. "For my part, though my visit to Europe was wholly undesired —was forced upon me, in fact, by dire circumstances," she added emphatically, glaring at Mr. Bundercombe—"since I am here I find so much work ready to my hand, so much appalling ignorance, so much prejudice, that I conceive it to be my duty to take up during my stay the work which presents itself here. I ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Burke County. Her recollections are not quite so appalling as Matilda's, but they are not ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... arrived at a new epoch. We are entering on experiments, with the government and the Constitution of the country, hitherto untried, and of fearful and appalling aspect. This message calls us to the contemplation of a future which little resembles the past. Its principles are at war with all that public opinion has sustained, and all which the experience of the government has sanctioned. ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... of a London season, without a friend or even an acquaintance, he preferred to laugh at his father's bewilderment before the waiter's "'amhandheggsir" for breakfast, rather than ask a question or express a doubt. His situation, if taken seriously, was too appalling to face. Had he known it better, he would ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... the goodwill, etc., of his hotel, farm, and appurtenances, or procuring a purchaser for them at that figure, which was, as a matter of course, a ridiculously low one. Two damsels who assisted Dr. Chase in ministering to the wants of his guests at dinner had a very appalling manner of presenting to the frightened feeder his choice of viands. The solemn silence which usually pervades the dinner-table of an American hotel was nowhere more observable than in this Doctor's establishment; whether it was from the fact that each guest suffered ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler

... memory's eye, almost maddening in their seductiveness. She glanced at the dress she wore, and a faint, weary smile came to her eyes and lips. Instead of the white, perfect yachting costume, she saw the wretched, shrunken, stained, shapeless garment that to her eyes would have looked appalling on the frame of a mendicant. Her costly shoes, once small and exquisitely moulded to her aristocratic feet, ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon

... farm, only it is bigger, and down in the earth's bowels you can well believe there is trouble, and if you believe in a hell, you can get it, illustrated proper, but the rivulets of lava that flow out of the wrinkles around the mouth of the crater are no more appalling than making fudges over a gas stove. When the lava cools you would swear it was fudges, only you can't eat the lava and get indigestion as you ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck

... specific or binding rule as to legal divorces; the putting away of a wife, as contemplated under the Mosaic custom, involved no judicial investigation or action by an established court. In our Lord's day the prevailing laxity in the matter of marital obligation had produced a state of appalling corruption in Israel; and woman, who by the law of God had been made a companion and partner with man, had become his slave. The world's greatest champion of woman and womanhood is ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... infants. Some masters would breed and rear, and try to get more work from the slave by kindness than harshness. Others would work them off and buy afresh; and as this would be probably the cheapest policy, no doubt it was the prevalent one. And what an appalling vista of dumb suffering do such considerations open to us! Cold, hunger, nakedness, torture, infamy, a foreign country, a strange climate, a life so hard that it made the early death which was almost inevitable a comparative ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley

... The appalling thing in the French Revolution is not the tumult but the design. Through all the fire and smoke we perceive the evidence of calculating organisation. The managers remain studiously concealed and masked; but there is no doubt about their presence from the first. They ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... had an examination made into probate matters, in Oklahoma, and found an appalling condition of things. In one county where there are six thousand probate cases pending, all involving the interests of Indian minors, the guardians in three thousand cases were delinquent in filing reports, ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane

... kept my oath," she thought. "I have wreaked the vengeance I have sworn. If I left him forever now, the manes of Zenith the gypsy might rest appeased. But the astrologer's prediction—ah! the work must go on to the appalling end." ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... strategy on the part of the invader. As the end of the bough descended under his weight, there was the appalling sound of a splitting branch, which made Tom Slade's blood run cold, and he held his breath in frightful suspense, expecting to see the form of his young friend come crashing ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... the side of the frame all in readiness, Mars appeared, but it still had a little farther to climb before it would be visible from the level of the wires. Nevertheless, I turned on the current from the batteries. All was darkness; never before had darkness seemed to me so profound, so absolutely appalling. Minutes passed like hours, but still that ominous darkness reigned. I felt the keen disappointment of failure; I grew incredulous as the time passed, and found myself admitting and rehearsing the absurdity of it ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood

... which divided opinion when men took heart to survey the appalling scene of moral desolation that the cataclysm of '93 had left behind. We may admire the courage of either school. For if the conscience of the Liberals was oppressed by the sanguinary tragedy in which freedom and ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 4: Joseph de Maistre • John Morley

... is appalling. We feel that death or the extreme torture of thirst is before us. We have no fear of hunger. Our horses are in the grove, and our knives in our belts. We can, live for weeks upon them; but will the cacti assuage ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid

... Griffin," he now hastened with long measured strides, carrying the still insensible Russian in his arms. In all, some half-dozen carriages had come over the embankment. The shrieks and cries of the wounded passengers were something appalling. Already the passengers in the fore part of the train, who had escaped unhurt, together with the officials and a few villagers who happened to be on the spot, were doing their best to rescue these unfortunates from the terrible wreckage in ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... the Twenty-Seventh Illinois, who succeeded to his brigade, was mortally wounded a few minutes later. I had now on the death-roll three brigade commanders, and the loss of subordinate officers and men was appalling, but their sacrifice had accomplished the desired result; they had not fallen in vain. Indeed, the bravery and tenacity of my division gave to Rosecrans the time required to make new dispositions, and exacted from our foes ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan

... assembled in Washington, humbly confessing their dependence upon Almighty God, who rules all that is done for human good, make haste at this informal meeting to express the emotions with which they have been filled by the appalling tragedy which has deprived the nation of its head and covered the land with mourning; and in further declaration of their ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Lincoln - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 6: Abraham Lincoln • Compiled by James D. Richardson

... he is, adds several pages to it. The dream of his boyhood has grown with him—that delightful dream of authorship! How this will-o'-the-wisp of the brain entices one into mental fogs! How it coaxes and pets one, cheats and ruins one! And so that appalling pile of closely-written manuscript is Mortimer's romance? Wasted hours and wasted thought—who would buy ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... wiped out by his immense prowess—has in a less degree this utter defeat of Servia as its background. But Servian history before all this has many glories, which, one would think, would serve the turn of heroic song better than appalling defeat and, indeed, enslavement. Why is the latter celebrated and not the former? The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does. ...
— The Epic - An Essay • Lascelles Abercrombie

... ear-rending chorus on the American side died away as if by magic. The silence was almost as appalling as had been the terrific noise, for it ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates

... shows the slaughter-roll of the Civil War. Yet the shattered remnants of each regiment preserved their organization, and many of the severest losses were incurred in the hour of triumph, and not of disaster. Thus, the 1st Minnesota, at Gettysburg, suffered its appalling loss while charging a greatly superior force, which it drove before it; and the little huddle of wounded and unwounded men who survived their victorious charge actually kept both the flag they had captured and the ground from which they had ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt

... wide, there waiting, in deepening gloom and fear, for the last light to leave the world. With his head fallen upon his breast and his eyes grown fixed and tragical with far-off gazing, he would look out upon the appalling sweep of sea and rock and sky, where the sombre wonder of the dusk was working more terribly than with thunder: clouds in embers, cliffs and mist and tumbling water turning to shadows, vanishing, as though they were not. In the place of a shining world, spread familiar ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... words, slowly uttered in the thunder-storm at midnight, was appalling in the last degree. More dead than alive, I surveyed him ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... of the blame for so appalling a controversy was not a simple task. On the one hand, a writer in the ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley

... interruption or injury from causes over which we have no control; and this danger must always attend the extension of our manufacturing system to the prejudice of other interests; so that in case of a stoppage or serious interruption to the current in which it flows the consequences would be appalling; nor is there in all probability a nation on the Continent (our good ally Louis Philippe included) that would not gladly contribute to the humiliation of the power and diminution of the wealth ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... storm burst upon them; the wind blew with great force; and, although they were shielded from it, still the cocoa-nut trees ground and sawed each other's stems as they bent their heads to its force. The lightning was vivid, and the thunder appalling, while the rain descended in a continual torrent. The animals left the pastures, and sheltered themselves in the grove; and, although noonday, it was so dark that they could not ...
— Masterman Ready - The Wreck of the "Pacific" • Captain Frederick Marryat

... lenient or malignant, whether I should recover or perish, was to be left to the decision of the future. This incident, instead of appalling me, tended rather to invigorate my courage. The danger which I feared had come. I might enter with indifference on this theatre of pestilence. I might execute, without faltering, the duties that my circumstances ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... dreadful thing; and it is appalling to know how the English were obliged, next morning, to kill those prisoners mortally wounded, who yet writhed in agony upon the ground; how the dead upon the French side were stripped by their own countrymen ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens

... national body, and we are sure to have a nasty growth striking out at intervals. It tears the heart-strings when we see the brave, the brilliant, the merry, the wise, sinking under the evil clement in our appalling dual nature, and we feel, with something like despair, that we cannot be altogether delivered from the scourge yet awhile. I have stabs of conscience when I call to mind all I have seen and remember how little I have done, and I can only hope, in a shame-faced way, that the use of intoxicants ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... need not be said, disavowed complicity in this extraordinary entrapping of the Daily brigade by means of an odour. Could it be held responsible for the excesses of its disinterested sympathisers?... Still, the appalling trick showed the high temperature to which blood had risen in the genial battle between great rival organs. Persons in the inmost ring whispered that Denry Machin had at length been bested on this critically ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... traditions of his fathers and his passion for the chase are still alive within him. The wild enjoyments which formerly animated him in the woods painfully excite his troubled imagination; and his former privations appear to be less keen, his former perils less appalling. He contrasts the independence which he possessed among his equals with the servile position which he occupies in civilized society. On the other hand, the solitudes which were so long his free home are still at hand; a few hours' march will bring him back to them once more. The whites offer him ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... easily diverted. Even the tragic and inspiring idea of Marx, that the poor were nearing a limit of painful experience, and awakening to a sense of intolerable wrongs, began to develop into the more appalling conception that the poor were simply in a witless uncomfortable inconclusive way—"muddling along"; that they wanted nothing very definitely nor very urgently, that mean fears enslaved them and mean satisfactions decoyed them, that they took the very ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... But intellect, after all, finds its frontier. I may say of it what I have said of the esthetic sentiment, what I have said of the active sentiment in man: it attracts, it delights—what is more, I think it even consoles; but the one thing I find about it that to me is perfectly appalling is ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser

... sprinkled holy water right and left, bidding his Indians chant a rosary for the souls which once had inhabited these appalling tenements. The Indians obeyed with clattering teeth, keeping their eyes fixed stonily upon the ground lest they stumble and fall amid ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton

... Galcha origin in hopeless confusion. The various Afghan tribes, separated from each other by natural barriers and intervening alien stocks, though similar in physical type, speech, religion and culture, have no sense of unity, no common political aims, while the appalling list of tribes constituting the population of the country[1396] offers little hope of Afghanistan ever developing national cohesion. Kafiristan alone, which lies in the Hindu Kush range for the most part at an altitude of 12,000 feet or more, harbors in its recesses many remnants ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... clutch at their precarious foundations even while they danced to the tune of various and appalling noises. Above the ascending roar of the earthquake Alexina heard the crashing of steeples, the dome of the City Hall, of brick buildings too hastily erected, of ten thousand falling chimneys; of creaking and grinding timbers, and of the eucalyptus trees behind her, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton

... torturing uncertainty wearing my very life away, I watched and waited as women are wont to do. Then dark rumors were afloat of foes making a desperate advance, and of bloody battle pending. One night a horror fell upon my troubled sleep—an appalling gloom, a shuddering, suffocating sense of some impending doom. Battling fiercely and blindly with this dread, invisible something, I awoke in deadly fright, to find the terror no less clear to my perceptions, no less palpable and ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the Atlantic terminus, as Panama was the Pacific terminus, of the treasure trail across the Isthmus of Darien. The Spaniards, knowing nothing of Cape Horn, and unable to face the appalling dangers of Magellan's straits, used to bring the Peruvian treasure ships to Panama, whence the treasure was taken across the isthmus to Nombre de Dios by recuas, that is, ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood

... checked any familiarity, and evidently had produced some embarrassment on the limbs of four visitors who had just been ushered into its glories. After hesitating before one or two gorgeous fawn-colored brocaded easy-chairs of appalling and spotless virginity, one of them seated himself despairingly on a tete-a-tete sofa in marked and painful isolation, while another sat uncomfortably upright on a sofa. The two others remained standing, vaguely gazing at the ceiling, and exchanging ostentatiously admiring but hollow ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte

... he was an appalling figure to behold, and the two lighted tapers in massive candelabras on each side of the desk lighted up his face with an unholy and gruesome glare. The funereal aspect of the scene was heightened by the house being in total darkness, and though many women had fainted, oppressed ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... widely spread roots of the great tree behind which he had hidden, he reached the opening in the forest where the tragedy had been enacted, and would have been on his knees beside the dead deer in another instant had not an appalling sound stayed him. A scream, the like of which once heard is never to be forgotten, thrilled him to the marrow. He started back, casting his glance upward. There was a rustling in the thick branches of the tree beneath which the doe had fallen. Again the maddened scream rang out and ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster

... aimlessly, the care and grace of art, the consecration of religion, applied to the matters of every day. It hung together with her worship of life, with her belief, as she expressed it to you, all those years ago, that life must be begun many times anew. And it is this which, for all the appalling unexpectedness, the dreadful cataclysm of her temporal ending, has made the death of Gabrielle Delzant so strangely difficult, for me, at least, to realise ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... carriage, till as she said you were black in the face, and insisted on giving her all your pocket money, your knife and your watch. She added that my coachman John—whom I shall instantly discharge—was witness to the whole transaction. Now, Ernest, be pleased to tell me whether this appalling story ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... of it regarding the universe not as a dead thing but a living, and athwart the fire deluges that from time to time sweep it, and seem to threaten with ruin everything in it we hold sacred, descrying nothing more appalling than the phoenix-bird immolating herself in flames that she may the sooner rise renewed out of her ashes and soar aloft with healing in her wings. See CARLYLE, THOMAS, EXODUS FROM ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... the Eighth Arrondissement, M. Ernest Moreau, requests me to come to the Mairie. He tells me the appalling news of the massacre on the Boulevard des Capucines. And at brief intervals further news of increasing seriousness arrives. The National Guard this time has definitely turned against the Government, and is shouting: "Hurrah for Reform!" The army, frightened at what it did yesterday, appears ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... wounded snakes, held their toilsome way. His fatal aim was taken, and a soldier fell at every report of his piece. Even after the worried troops had entered Charlestown, there was no escape for them from the deadly bullets of the restless veteran. The appalling white horse would suddenly and unexpectedly dash out from a brake, or from behind a rock, and the whizzing of his bullet was the precursor of death. He followed the enemy to their very boats; and then, turning his horse's head, returned unharmed ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson

... with seasonable showers render the earth bountiful of grain; may the presiding Brahmans secure the favour of the gods by acceptable sacrifices; may the association of the pious confer delight until the end of time, and may the appalling blasphemies of the profane be silenced ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta

... manifold absurdities of this story there are other aspects of it even more startling. What a picture it presents of fiendish cruelty and atrocious vindictiveness! What an appalling exhibition of divine malignity! God, the omnipotent and omniscient ruler of the universe, is represented as harboring and executing the most diabolical intentions. He ruthlessly exterminates all his children except a favored few, and includes in his vengeance ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote

... sinister face of the recluse appeared pressed to the grating of the air-hole. "Oh! oh!" she cried, with an appalling laugh; "'tis the Egyptian who is ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... least holds him in pleasant recollection for the fun he has afforded him in the past. The two first boys of creation were not bad fellows at all, although as was natural, their bringing up resulted in a general condition of pure cussedness that at times became appalling to their parents. The fact that there had never been any other boys in the world before placed Adam and Eve at a considerable disadvantage in rearing these two youngsters. There were no precedents to go by, and as a consequence the lads were permitted to do a good many things that ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs

... slant, brushing through the thicket, the sound of their approach being covered by the appalling cries of the victim and the demon-like tumult of the drunken braves. The two scouts were racked with soul pain as they went on so that they could scarcely hold their peace and keep their feet from running. A new sense of the capacity for evil in the heart of man entered ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... that was appalling, they seemed to be flung into the midst of a hurricane. The wind lashed the sea to fury, and the Mary Ellen spun around ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope

... the bloody hunt of whales. Gnawed within and scorched without, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable idea; such an one, could he be found, would seem the very man to dart his iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes. Or, if for any reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated for that, yet such an one would seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on his underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, certain it is, that with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... continued, appalling in its violence. It swept like a wave towards the building, drowning the roar of the stream below. The girl at the table rose and went to the closed door. She gripped a revolver in her right hand. With her left she reached ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... Here have the Briton, and the Gaul, and the painted savage, mingled in the dread fight,—steed rushing upon steed, hands clenched in hands with grappling vigor, while the climbing fire, and the clashing steel, and eyes flashing with maddened fury, and the appalling war-whoop of the Indian, have all combined in adding terror to "the rough frowns of war." Here "hath mailed Mars sat on his altar up to his ears in blood," smiling grimly at the music of echoing cannons, the shrill trump, and all the rude ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone

... share the fate of the lions and the tigers? It seems reasonable to answer that it was because the bears were wiser, more gifted in the art of self-preservation, and more resourceful in execution. In view of the omnivorous menu of bears, and their appalling dependence upon small things for food, it is to me marvelous that they now maintain ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... by the Gang Be the Rhymester who sang Their praises in doggrel appalling; More now were a sin— Ho, waiters, begin! Each soul ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith

... tainted him to me. Several times I let him go alone among them. I avoided intercourse with them in every possible way. I spent an increasing proportion of my time upon the beach, looking for some liberating sail that never appeared,—until one day there fell upon us an appalling disaster, which put an altogether different aspect ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells



Words linked to "Appalling" :   dismaying, experience, alarming



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