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Repugnant   Listen
adjective
Repugnant  adj.  Disposed to fight against; hostile; at war with; being at variance; contrary; inconsistent; refractory; disobedient; also, distasteful in a high degree; offensive; usually followed by to, rarely and less properly by with; as, all rudeness was repugnant to her nature. "(His sword) repugnant to command." "There is no breach of a divine law but is more or less repugnant unto the will of the Lawgiver, God himself."
Synonyms: Opposite; opposed; adverse; contrary; inconsistent; irreconcilable; hostile; inimical.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Repugnant" Quotes from Famous Books



... sat there, she heard voices, and, to her surprise, Denis Quirk and Sylvia paused directly in front of the summer-house. The very thought of eavesdropping was repugnant to her, but they were speaking so quickly and earnestly that she had heard part of their conversation before she could interrupt it. Remembering Sylvia Jackson's passion, possibly fearing an outburst of malice, Kathleen kept very quiet, resolved ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin

... we consider accident, And how, repugnant unto sense, It pays desert with bad event, ...
— Advice to a Mother on the Management of her Children • Pye Henry Chavasse

... exclusive privileges be given to the Church of England, not only will the measure be repugnant to every principle of sound legislation, but contrary to the spirit and intention of the Act of 1791, under which the reserves were made for the Protestant clergy. I will not enter further into it at present, ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... council were empowered to make laws and ordinances for the local government, and to fine, imprison, and sometimes whip and otherwise punish offenders, so as their statutes, fines, pains, and penalties were reasonable and not repugnant to law. [Footnote: History of Tiverton, App. 5.] The foreign trading company was an offshoot of the guild, and was intended to protect commerce. Obviously some such organization must have been necessary, for, if property was insecure within ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... spared him as much as possible—feeling that it must be intensely repugnant to him—but he grew furious in spite of all his efforts to control his temper, and at each fresh attack upon him his flashing eyes and knitted brows betrayed the fierce rage he was in; then, suddenly remembering that his ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... ignorant of what God requires, but because he is unwilling to obey, that he does not yield it. His disobedience is not as if that requirement were inconsistent with his natural powers, but as opposed by their tendency. It is not as if obedience were foreign to his nature, but because it is repugnant to his will. But when the sinner is renewed, the requirement of the duty takes effect. The result upon the man proclaims the adaptation of the claim to his state; and the nature of that claim shows that he is prepared for the exercise which it urges. The law of God demands ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... visit of Phillip's, and the feeling that grew between us as I nursed him well and strong again, that brought it about that I told Kenneth Moore, who had become so repugnant to me that I could not bear to see him or hear him speak, that I wanted to be released from the promise he had wrung from me that night at ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... was repugnant to his imagination, shocking to his ideas of honesty, shocking to his conception of mankind. This enormity affected one's outlook on what was possible in this world: it was as if for instance the sun had turned blue, throwing a new and sinister light on men and nature. ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad

... not want to die in space—wasted, forever undevoured. At least, he must die on a planet, where there might be creatures with the compassion and wisdom to give his body the proper death rites. The thought of succumbing to inferior creatures was repugnant, but it was better than rotting to feed monocells or ectogenes, and far superior to wasting ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or that the legislature may alter the constitution by an ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root

... came to Mr. Ford it seemed to him more repugnant. First, that he should have blamed Tavia without investigating the matter himself; next that he should have allowed a man like Squire ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose

... Chesterfield despised the Gospels, and made little of St. Paul; yet the New Testament could have taught him something concerning the nature of a father's love. His language is repulsive, repugnant, and yet how few fathers have taken the trouble to write 400 educational letters of great length to their sons! All one can say is that Chesterfield's letters are ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... different language. For we feel that the soul partakes of the ideal and invisible; and can never fall into the error of confusing the external circumstances of man with his higher self; or his origin with his nature. It is as repugnant to us as it was to him to imagine that our moral ideas are to be attributed only to cerebral forces. The value of a human soul, like the value of a man's life to himself, is inestimable, and cannot be reckoned in earthly or material things. The human being alone has the consciousness ...
— Phaedo - The Last Hours Of Socrates • Plato

... rhetoric; whereupon rhetoric became an empty and verbal art. So we may see that the opinion of Copernicus, touching the rotation of the earth, which astronomy itself cannot correct, because it is not repugnant to any of the phenomena, yet natural philosophy may correct. So we see also that the science of medicine if it be destituted and forsaken by natural philosophy, it is not much better than an empirical practice. With this reservation, therefore, we proceed to human ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... into their neighbours' territories. Long wars, requiring the maintenance of a permanent army, the continual levying of troops and taxes, and a prolonged effort to keep what they had acquired, were repugnant to them. The kingdom which David had founded owed its permanence to the strong will of its originator, and its increase or even its maintenance depended upon the absence of any internal disturbance or court intrigue, to counteract which might make too serious ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... children ever cherished the slightest feeling of bitterness on account of his most remarkable financial operations. My mother, however, was of too different a nature to be easily converted or carried away by his social graces. These matters were to her most repugnant when treated lightly and jestingly. "Whatever is serious is not funny, that's all." But she never disputed the fact that, as a happy humorist, he always succeeded in drawing people over to his side, though she never failed to ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various

... where the fun comes in. There are enough improper things that I would like to do for me not to care about those things that are repugnant to me. Some time ago I made up my mind never to do a thing I did not want to do, or did not give me pleasure, unless it was absolutely necessary, or was required as a courtesy to somebody else. I am trying to stick ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish

... those little troubles of children, of which older people make light; but with a sudden gratitude also, as he reflected how richly possessed his life had actually been by beautiful aspects and imageries, seeing how greatly what was repugnant to the eye disturbed ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... only not obtained Mr. Barrett's sanction to their marriage; they had not even invoked it; and the doubly clandestine character thus forced upon the union could not be otherwise than repugnant to Mr. Browning's pride; but it was dictated by the deepest filial affection on the part of his intended wife. There could be no question in so enlightened a mind of sacrificing her own happiness with that ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... irremediable. Gratitude is paralysis. A benefit is a sticky and repugnant adherence which deprives you of free movement. Those odious, opulent, and spoiled creatures whose pity has thus injured you are well aware of this. It is done—you are their creature. They have bought you—and how? By a bone taken from their dog and cast to you. They have ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... cries and exorcisms, to drive off the Weettakos from sucking the dead man's blood. The presence of Henrich seemed to annoy and irritate these priests of Satan; and he was glad to retire from a scene so repugnant to his better feelings, and to return to Oriana, by whose care and direction the unhappy Mailah and her infant had been promptly removed from the place of death and desolation, and conveyed to her own ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb

... personal services. It is entirely repugnant to the feeling of humanity to regard a man's person in its entirety as an instrument intended to satisfy the wants of another.(66) Yet this happens wherever slavery exists; in its coarsest form, in cannibalism. Among civilized nations, we can speak, under this head, ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... philosophers, as Cicero saith, who was one of them, have not some of them maintained; and I believe that scarce anything can be more absurdly said in natural philosophy than that which now is called Aristotle's Metaphysics; or more repugnant to government than much of that he hath said in his Politics; nor more ignorantly than a great part of his Ethics." I am far from approving this judgment, but I think that the shock which a young scholar receives on seeing his idols so mercilessly broken is ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller

... the street he swore deeply, quietly, to himself. A spider's web, and to cut it he must use this spidery, secret, unclean method, so utterly repugnant to one who regarded his private life as his most sacred piece of property. But the die was cast, he could not go back. And he went on into the Poultry, and locked away the green morocco case and the key to that cipher destined ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... under a name that Louise electrically decided to be fictitious, seemed unable to find her voice at first in their mutual defiance, and she made a pretence of letting her strange eyes rove about the shop before she answered. Her presence was so repugnant to Louise that she turned abruptly and hurried out of the place without returning the good-morning which the German sent after her with the usual addition of her name. She resented it now, for if it was not tantamount to an introduction ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... positively whether honey is or is not repugnant to the grubs of the Philanthus was hardly practicable by the method just explained. The first meals consisted of flesh, and after that nothing in particular occurred. The honey is encountered later, ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... since entertained any serious idea of marriage in connection with Colonel Quaritch. The only person whom there seemed to be the slightest probability of her marrying was Edward Cossey, and the mere thought of this was enough to make the whole idea of matrimony repugnant to her. ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard

... resolutions declaring that 'the Legislature is the exclusive judge of the objects for which money shall be raised and appropriated by its authority,' &c.; that the Legislature has no right to 'levy or appropriate money for the purpose of executing the object of a law, by them deemed repugnant to, or unauthorized by the Constitution;' that the 'Supplemental (Union Bank) Bill is unconstitutional;' that 'the bonds delivered by said bank, and by it sold to Nicholas Biddle on the 18th August, 1838, are not ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... midnight penance. The devil is scarcely more cruel than the Church, for ages, taught that God was. It's true that Christ's life was one of self-sacrifice; but was there any useless, mistaken self-sacrifice in it? If God is anything like Mrs. Yocomb, nothing could be more repugnant to him than ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... world and who could not know and understand his past. As soon as he came across a former acquaintance or anyone from the staff, he bristled up immediately and grew spiteful, ironical, and contemptuous. Everything that reminded him of his past was repugnant to him, and so in his relations with that former circle he confined himself to trying to do his duty ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... heart in which it was impossible they should understand; they have presumed to explain a Christ whom years and years of obedience could alone have made them able to comprehend. Their teaching of him, therefore, has been repugnant to the common sense of many who had not half their privileges, but in whom, as in Nathanael, there was no guile. Such, naturally, press their theories, in general derived from them of old time, upon ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald

... them up. Labor cannot be allowed to dictate to capital and say how business shall be conducted. There is no objection to the formation of unions and trades councils, but membership must not be compulsory. It is repugnant to the American idea of ...
— War of the Classes • Jack London

... statarium,[47] called out the banderia[48] and gathered together the county pandurs[49] and the militia, in order by their combined efforts, to extirpate the evil without having recourse to the assistance of the military—a measure always repugnant to ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai

... error? We must free ourselves from the past, free ourselves utterly from its toils, if the future is to be ours. And we shall never free ourselves from the past until we have forgotten it. Let us leave here. I cannot stand it any longer! I do not know which is most repugnant to me, the asceticism of these early Christians or the senseless fantasies of the Greeks," and without ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith

... barbarism! Let us have a homily on its beauties! let them picture to us the meliorations of cannibalism! Will any one do it? No; it is a self-evident wrong. To attempt, even, to prove it wrong, would seem to be a work of supererogation. Barbarism it repugnant to the common sense of the Anglo-Saxon race; a violation of the conscience of civilization. Cannibalism is an almost inconceivable outrage against all right, in moral, social, or even superior animal existence. Few animals or even reptiles ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit

... he to Gringoire, fondling his misshapen chin with his horny hand; "I don't see why you should not be hung. It is true that it appears to be repugnant to you; and it is very natural, for you bourgeois are not accustomed to it. You form for yourselves a great idea of the thing. After all, we don't wish you any harm. Here is a means of extricating yourself from your predicament for the moment. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... able to smoke a cigarette for twenty-four hours. After the entertainment he was asked to smoke, as was his usual habit. He was then away from any one who could influence him. He replied that the very idea was repugnant. However, he was induced to take a cigarette in his mouth, but it made him ill and he flung it away with every expression of disgust. *This is an instance of what is called post-hypnotic suggestion. Dr. ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus

... admit of an Excuse, though this I presume is regulated according to the Agreement first stipulated between the Gamesters, and this Fault is called Raking, i. e. not striking your Ball cleanly, but gliding along, as it were; But in this, if you touch your Ball twice, it is a loss; as indeed repugnant to ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett

... normal and brutal men throughout the inexorably long workday, and then creeping to some mean room where it would sit and snivel till the night fell across the small-paned window. And through the sallow mist of her unavailing and repugnant pity there flashed suddenly the lightning of certainty that some day the thing would happen. But what thing? She would put her hand to her head, but she was never able ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... increasing earnestness, her eyes more thoughtful, "but I am going to tell you a portion of my life-story in order that you may partially comprehend. This is my first professional engagement; but I was no stage-struck girl when I first applied for the position. Rather, the thought was most repugnant to me. My earlier life had been passed under conditions which held me quite aloof from anything of the kind. While I always enjoyed interpreting character as a relaxation, and even achieved, while at school ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... boldness in color and his revolutionary way of seeing Nature, but there was not connected with his name the least offence against the conventions of society. His women were women of the people, picturesque and repugnant; the only flesh that he had shown on his canvases was that of a sweaty laborer or the chubby child. He was an honored master, who cultivated his stupendous ability with the same calm that he showed in ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... with an anxious face, and whispered that it was only fear of the police that had so suddenly quieted the men, and besought him not to withdraw till they were ready to leave the establishment. Chester turned back; both the place and company were repugnant to him, but it was his duty to remain, and he sat down regarding the two men as they drank at the counter, boisterously knocking their glasses together ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens

... of moral restraint formally delegated to religion; and punishments render virtue attractive and vice repugnant. Holbach's theory of social organization is practically that of Aristotle. Men combine in order to increase the store of individual well-being, to live the good life. If those to whom society has delegated sovereignty ...
— Baron d'Holbach - A Study of Eighteenth Century Radicalism in France • Max Pearson Cushing

... without the consent of the other States from their most solemn obligations, and hazard the liberties and happiness of the millions composing this Union, can not be acknowledged. Such authority is believed to be utterly repugnant both to the principles upon which the General Government is constituted and to the objects which it is expressly formed ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, - Vol. 2, Part 3, Andrew Jackson, 1st term • Edited by James D. Richardson

... longer take any one seriously—a sad state of mind for those who write or teach! How lightly must one hold his readers and hearers to approach them in such an attitude! To him who has preserved enough honesty, nothing is more repugnant than the careless irony of an acrobat of the tongue or pen, who tries to dupe honest and ingenuous men. On one side openness, sincerity, the desire to be enlightened; on the other, chicanery making game of the public! But he knows not, the liar, how far ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner

... prince is anxious to help Burdovsky and offers him friendship and a large sum of money, in the sincerity of his heart. And here they stand like two sworn enemies—ha, ha, ha! You all hate Burdovsky because his behaviour with regard to his mother is shocking and repugnant to you; do you not? Is not that true? Is it not true? You all have a passion for beauty and distinction in outward forms; that is all you care for, isn't it? I have suspected for a long time that you cared for nothing else! Well, let me tell you that perhaps there is not one of you who loved ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... first, objections were made to moving pictures on the ground that in many cases they had a tendency to cater to the lower instincts, that subjects were illustrated which were repugnant to the finer feelings and appealed to the gross and the sensual. Burglaries, murders and wild western scenes in which the villain-heroes triumphed were often shown and no doubt these had somewhat of a pernicious influence on susceptible ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing

... repair the wrong we are doing as soon as our military aims have been achieved." And again the Chancellor said the invasion of Belgium "is contrary to the law of nature." To Mr. Bernard Shaw's peculiar sense of international morality such dealing is not, however, repugnant. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... perception is that synonym. So that the representative theory, when fairly interpreted, amounts simply to this;—that the mind is immediately cognisant, not of real objects themselves, but only of its own perceptions of real objects. To accuse the representationist of maintaining a doctrine more repugnant to common sense than this, or in any way different from it, would be both erroneous and unjust. The golden rule of philosophical criticism is, to give every system the benefit of the most favourable interpretation which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... what I read in the holy Scriptures, and the Creed, called the Apostles, and I don't trouble my Head any farther: I leave the rest to be disputed and defined by the Clergy, if they please; and if any Thing is in common Use with Christians that is not repugnant to the holy Scriptures, I observe it for this Reason, that I ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus

... his will. He would have more willingly supposed that he had been the victim of a momentary physical faintness, for the idea of having been thus subjected to the influence of a woman, and of a woman whom he hardly knew, was repugnant to him, and had in it something humiliating to his pride, or at least to his vanity. But he could not escape the conviction forced ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... comes in contact with him knows, is as honest as the day is long, and the story grieved and shocked him. He expressed the utmost horror and consternation, and requested to be excused from speaking further upon a subject so repugnant to his feelings. If there were more men of this stamp in politics, who find corruption revolting instead of amusing, our legislatures would ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... John, biting his lip with that resolute half-combative air which I now saw in him at times, roused by things which continually met him in his dealings with the world—things repugnant alike to his feelings and his principles, but which he had still to endure, not having risen high enough to oppose, single-handed, the great mass of social corruption which at this crisis of English history kept gathering and gathering, until out of the very horror ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... The repugnant idea of succeeding to Evelyn in his affections had stifled the very germs of coquetry, and my manner to him was unmistakable; nor was it without evident dissatisfaction that Mr. Basil Bainrothe surveyed ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... des Boscenos had lost his portfolio in a brawl and he was reduced to painful expedients which were repugnant to his impetuous character. The Viscountess Olive was expensive. Cornemuse advised that the monthly allowance of that lady ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France

... and unreasoning hate for the thing, whatever it was, a hate so strong that he forgot to feel fear. It seemed to him to combine the repulsive qualities of a spider and a toad. The body, fat and repugnant, was covered by a loose skin, dull and leathery, and the fatness seemed to be pulled downward below the lower tentacles like an insect's body, until it was wider at the ...
— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel

... of Tyrone complained he had so many eyes upon him, that he could not drink a cup of sack without the government being advertised of it within a few hours afterwards. This system of social espionage, so repugnant to all the habits of the Celtic family, was not the only mode of annoyance resorted to against the veteran chief. Every former dependent who could be induced to dispute his claims as a landlord, under the new relations established by the late decision, was sure of a judgment ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee

... which they pretended to have been witnesses, or which some of them, perhaps, believed they had really seen. All those who deceive mankind are not always cheats; they are frequently deceived by those who are knaves in reality. Besides, I believe I have sufficiently proved, that miracles are repugnant to the essence of an immutable God, as well as to his wisdom, which will not permit him to alter the wise laws he has himself established. In short, miracles are useless, since those related in Scripture have not produced the effects which God ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach

... always remain valid. Therefore our Synod can neither be governed by a majority nor a minority, now nor ever hereafter, with respect to doctrine and discipline. This is the reason why nothing can be introduced among us, now nor at any time hereafter, which may be repugnant to the Bible and the Augsburg Confession of Faith. Neither the majority nor the minority shall determine what our doctrine and discipline are, because they are already determined in the above-named rule. But that we assemble from time to time is neither to form ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... met. But no one was taken in. Instinctively each felt her contemptuous mockery of the human being in himself, or herself. She had a profound grudge against the human being. That which the word 'human' stood for was despicable and repugnant to her. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... adhesion is in the matter of the national budget. To minds charged with the primary necessity of advance planning, cooerdination, provision of synchronizing parts in organization, the whole notion of our hit-or-miss system is repugnant. A budget system is not the remedy for all administrative ills, but it provides a basis of organization that at least does not paralyze administrative efficiency as our system does today. Through it, the cooerdination of expenditure in government department, ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg

... few of them are in a good style. Certainly, a more judicious and more decorous choice ought to have been made. It was not necessary to excite regret in the mind of the moralist, by placing under the eyes of the public figures of both sexes which are repugnant ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... and led him to his own apartments. All the while he was thinking and thinking what he could do to get rid of him. The idea of having him, a mere peasant and one of his own subjects, for a son-in-law was most repugnant to him, and hurt his kingly pride. At last he said, "The chamberlain will most certainly be punished for his crime. As for you, who have twice been my saviour, you shall be my son-in-law. Now the customs observed at court demand ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko

... of female politicians Addison indulges frequently in humorous sallies. He assures them that it gives an ill-natured cast to the eye, and flushes the cheeks worse than brandy. Party rage, he says, is a male vice, and is altogether repugnant 'to the softness, the modesty, and those other endearing qualities which are ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... opinion, her objections ought to give way to the necessity of hearing in her own person what is stated to be of importance that she should know. But I find that circumstances of recent occurrence, and not easily to be forgotten, have rendered her so utterly repugnant to a personal interview with Mr. Glossin that it would be cruelty to insist upon it; and she has deputed me to receive his commands, or proposal, or, in short, whatever he may ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... with large head, sometimes pierced with holes, sometimes swollen with protuberances, bristling with spikes, and covered with tubercles; it has irregular and hideous horns; its body and tail are covered with callosities; its sting makes a dangerous wound; it is both repugnant ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne

... Jesus—the teacher, the God—is practically unknown. He is too remote from themselves and the ordinary activities of their daily lives; he is not married, like his mother; he has no trade, like his father (Mark calls him a carpenter); moreover, the maxims of the Sermon on the Mount are so repugnant to the South Italian as to be almost incomprehensible. In effigy, this period of Christ's life is portrayed most frequently in the primitive monuments of the catacombs, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... awarded to it, has always prompted this explanation of the achievements of extraordinarily gifted individuals, in whatever line of action their exceptional gifts displayed themselves. Besides, if there is something repugnant to human vanity in having to submit to the dictates of superior reason and the rule of superior power as embodied in mere men of flesh and blood, there is on the contrary something very flattering and soothing to that same vanity in the idea of having been specially singled out as the ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin

... Mr. Jefferson, the secretary of state; and the herald's trumpet for the tilt was sounded by the Virginia assembly, in the adoption of a resolution, declaring so much of the late act of Congress as provided for the assumption of the state debts "repugnant to the constitution of the United States," and "the exercise of a power not expressly granted to the general government." That clause of the act for funding the continental debt, which restrained the government from redeeming at pleasure ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing

... that in my previous letter disquiet and sadness are visible. Sadness there must be, for I have lost her again, and there is disquiet because something has changed in me. I tell thee sincerely, that nothing is more repugnant to my nature than that religion, and still I cannot recognize myself since I met Lygia. Is it enchantment, or love? Circe changed people's bodies by touching them, but my soul has been changed. No one but Lygia could ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... with you, brother?"—the young girl at length said, with a tone and manner that showed her to be compelling herself to the performance of a painful and repugnant task. ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... Commercial Agent who bought and sold goods for the Association. There was also a group called "The Sacred Legion," who did exceptionally disagreeable labors, not from the love of them but from the sacred principle of duty. Only occasionally some repugnant task had to be undertaken, and be it to the honor of the leaders, not one of them, even the most fastidious or cultivated, ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman

... at least their reduced fecundity. This shows the connection to be contrary to the normal state of the races, as it is contrary to the preservation of species in the animal kingdom. . .Far from presenting to me a natural solution of our difficulties, the idea of amalgamation is most repugnant to my feelings. It is now the foundation of some of the most ill-advised schemes. But wherever it is practiced, amalgamation among different races produces shades of population, the social position of which can never be regular and settled. From a physiological point of view, it is ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz

... Florus, the second son of Peter, and the grandson of Louis the Fat. [80] This fable of the grateful or venal monks was too respectfully entertained by our antiquaries, Cambden [81] and Dugdale: [82] but it is so clearly repugnant to truth and time, that the rational pride of the family now refuses to accept this imaginary founder. Their most faithful historians believe, that, after giving his daughter to the king's son, Reginald of Courtenay ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... there still remains a remnant of barbarism, repugnant to civilization, to decency, and to the laws of the United States. Territorial officers, however, have been found who are willing to perform their duty in a spirit of equity and with a due sense of the necessity ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... dreams of our life to own land, if for no other reason than that of obtaining the privilege of planting vines. As they take root, so will we, and after we have eaten their delicious fruit, the very thought of leaving our acre will be repugnant. The literature of the vine would fill a library; the literature of love would crowd many libraries. It is not essential to read everything before we start a ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... but it would not down. He was not ready to admit its truth—but there was no denying its logic. There was something inexpressibly repugnant in the thought. He infinitely preferred to believe that Naomi hated her husband—was miserable with him—he preferred that to the idea that they were accomplices in the murder of a ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen

... business is with the beautiful. The repugnant is outside of his province. Let him study only the beautiful, and he will always be pleased; let him treat only of the beautiful, with a true feeling for it, and he will always ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... certainly a most foppish and absurd way of Proceeding, and merits nothing but Scandal, Derision, nay Hell itself. Now suppose this Notorious and Profligate Governour had bin impower'd to see the Execution of these Edicts perform'd, for of themselves they were repugnant both to Law and Equity; yet he commanded (or they who were to see the Execution thereof, did it of their own Heads without Authority) that when they phansied or proposed to themselves any place, that was well stor'd with Gold, to rob and feloniously steal it away from the Indians living ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas

... after thus dealing with his own heart, he can say that his knowledge has indeed been fruitful to him,—yet consider how many there are who have been forced by the inevitable laws of modern education into toil utterly repugnant to their natures, and that in the extreme, until the whole strength of the young soul was sapped away; and then pronounce with fearfulness how far, and in how many senses, it may indeed be true that the wisdom of this world ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin

... that of literary folks, because the former teach me more. I am given up to the study of metaphysics. I have a passion for physical exercises, for gymnastics, for fencing, and I try to live in an evenly-balanced temper, nothing being so repugnant to me as affectation and emphasis. I find a good deal of pleasure in going to bull-fights (although I do not take my son to the Plaza dressed up like a miniature torero, as an American writer declares I do), and I cultivate the theatre, because ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... religions. But in spite of its power of assimilation, there is much of the speech of England which has never become connatural to the Anglican people; and its grammar has passively suffered the introduction of many syntactical combinations, which are not merely irregular, but repugnant. I shall not here inquire whether this condition of English is an evil. There are many cases where a complex and cunningly-devised machine, dexterously guided, can do that which the congenital hand fails to accomplish; but the computing, of our losses and ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin

... with all this, the same gospel abounds with incredible relations, with circumstances repugnant to reason, and which it is impossible for a man of sense either to ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson

... will be either strengthened or debilitated. If you accustom your eye only or mainly to contemplate what is satisfactory in colour and form to the highest tastes, it will gradually become allured to such delicacy of organization as to reject unintentionally all that is repugnant ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... every one of the Confederate States where actual resistance should cease. A military autocracy controlling people who were engaged in the ordinary avocations of life was altogether contrary to his views of expediency, altogether repugnant to ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... we for a moment doubt but that such is the good and gracious will of Him who desires the little children to be baptized into Him. It certainly seems repugnant to all that we have ever learned of our God and Saviour, that it should be His will that our dear children, who have been conceived and born in sin, and are therefore by nature, or by birth, the children of wrath, ...
— The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church • G. H. Gerberding

... correct, "having by just examinations and curious disquisitions now cleared them from many gross absurdities contracted by ignorance and continued along by implicit tradition committed contrary to Art, Nature and Order, and repugnant to the very principles ...
— Memorials of Old London - Volume I • Various

... appropriate him to yourselves, in the name of him whom you love, and whom we all love by a greater or lesser title, never, I beg of you, use such words; they smack of the brotherhood and the sect, of pedantry and of the chatter of the schools—things utterly repugnant to Montaigne. ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... Paris, in 1822, Hector loyally tried to keep his promise to his father and threw himself into the studies which were so repugnant to him. He says he might have become a common-place physician after all, had he not one night gone to the opera. That night was a revelation; he became half frantic with excitement and enthusiasm. He went again and again. Learning that the Conservatoire ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... response to any effort on the part of his instructor. The letter is interesting also in its recognition of Farragut's still existing relations to Captain Porter, "to whose wishes this request can not be repugnant." The letter was dated October 14, 1817; and, the required permission being given, the two friends in the following month sailed from Gibraltar for Marseille as passengers in the sloop-of-war Erie. At Marseille a slight incident ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... we may advert to the fact that, in proportion as it is made so, there is a probability that it will not cease when schooldays end. As long as the acquisition of knowledge is rendered habitually repugnant, so long will there be a prevailing tendency to discontinue it when free from the coercion of parents and masters. And when the acquisition of knowledge has been rendered habitually gratifying, then there will be as prevailing a ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... established on earth an agency of the kind you infer, and delegated to it the power of life and death over human souls. Perhaps you do not go so far, but if you make the claim at all you must make it in its entirety. There is an idea of commercialism, of monopoly in that conception which is utterly repugnant to any one who tries to approach the subject with a fresh mind, and from an ideal point of view. And ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... to take this lad now from his charge and to place him in yours, would be to do an act so utterly repugnant to justice, to humanity, and to law, that, if done, it ought to drag us from this bench in disgrace. We have marked your petition dismissed; we have ordered you to pay the cost of this proceeding, and we have remanded the boy Ralph to the ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene

... sanguine. She was far too wise in her generation not to have agreed with Brenda's decision in certain former cases. The idea of her daughter's beauty and her father's millions being bartered for mere rank and social power, however splendid, was utterly repugnant to her. She had married for love, and she wanted Brenda to do the same, whoever the chosen man might be, provided always that he was a man—and in this regard there could be no doubt about Lord Lester Leighton; so as they walked away she said to ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... obituary sighs mournfully, computing their lives by a false reckoning. Yet after all, we have been disposed to regard the death of the young as something unnatural; the violent rending asunder of soul and body; the penalty enacted of a life artificial in its modes and repugnant to nature. As Cicero has beautifully expressed it, it is like the sudden quenching of a bright flame; but the death of the virtuous Old is as expected, as free from terror as the sunset; it is the coming of a gentle sleep after a long and ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various

... guard of chastity. For he who so lives that he looks to God for all grace, takes pleasure in spiritual purity; therefore he can so much more easily resist fleshly impurity: and in such faith the Spirit tells him of a certainty how he shall avoid evil thoughts and everything that is repugnant to chastity. For as the faith in divine favor lives without ceasing and works in all works, so it also does not cease its admonitions in all things that are pleasing to God or displease Him; as St. John says in his Epistle: "Ye need not that ...
— A Treatise on Good Works • Dr. Martin Luther

... not wilfully show disrespect to your wishes, father," said Quincy, calmly, "I must say frankly that I do not care to go back to the office. The study of law is repugnant to me, and its practice ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... hateful thing," he would say, when the truth came over him; "it is horribly repugnant. Why must one go away from here without leaving the least part of one behind? Now I listen for Bjerregrav's crutch, and there's a void in my ears, and after a time there won't be even that. Then he will be forgotten, and perhaps more besides, who will have followed ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... devotion, their chaunting and their incense, were already made familiar to the people in every temple of Fo. But, as Lord Macartney has observed, "the prohibition or restriction of sensual gratifications in a despotic country, where there are so few others, is difficult to be relished. Confession is repugnant to the close and suspicious character of the nation, and penance would but aggravate the misery of him whose inheritance is his labour, and poverty his punishment. Against it also is the state of society in China, which excludes women from their proper share of influence and importance. ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... Hero' his companions felt, and he himself saw, that the book was too didactic. It was indeed plain truth out of Steele's heart, but an air of superiority, freely allowed only to the professional man teaching rules of his own art, belongs to a too didactic manner. Nothing was more repugnant to Steele's nature than the sense of this. He had defined the Christian as 'one who is always a benefactor, with the mien of a receiver.' And that was his own character, which was, to a fault, more ready to give than to receive, more prompt to ascribe honour ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... similar classes of unrefined humanity, made them prone to an error which there were few judicious preachers to warn them against; and we ought rather to wonder and admire the Divine clemency, which imparted to so rude nations the light of the Gospel, and disposed them to receive a religion so repugnant to their warlike habits, than that they should, at the same time, have adopted many gross superstitions, borrowed from the pagans, or retained numbers of those which had made part of their own national forms ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... thought, "if what I said were repugnant, she would give some hint of the fact; but how can it be possible ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe

... Mr. Gallatin, as those of which he was the author, is one made by a committee on March 22, 1793, that they ... are of opinion slavery is inconsistent with every principle of humanity, justice, and right, and repugnant to the spirit and express letter of the Constitution of the Commonwealth. Added to this was a resolution for its abolition ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... made her most effectual, nor, indeed, any serviceable protest against the treatment of her sex in China, or by the lords of the harem, so long as she consents to have her own person clothed in ways so repugnant to reason and religion, and grateful only to a vitiated taste, be it in her own or in the ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... secure. His energies, once so restless, were lulled, partly by habitual intoxication, partly by the physical pains which had nestled themselves into his robust fibres, efforts of an immense and still tenacious vitality to throw off diseases repugnant to its native magnificence of health. The finest constitutions are those which, when once seriously impaired, occasion the direst pain; but they also enable the sufferer to bear pain that would soon wear away the delicate. And Jasper bore ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... and discipline imposed by the evangelical law. From the Franciscan virtues of chastity, poverty, and obedience, preached by the Poverello of Assisi, they turned with aversion to laud the antipodal trinity of lust, license, and luxury. The mysticism of medieval Christianity was repugnant to their materialism, and the symbolism of its art, expressed under rigid, graceless forms, offended eyes that craved beauty of line and beauty of colour. They ignored or condemned any ulterior purpose of art as a teaching medium for spiritual truths. To such ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... holds men even exceptionally high-minded from breaking strong ties of custom and convenience is shown by a letter of Patrick Henry to a Quaker in 1773, in which he declared slavery "as repugnant to humanity as it is inconsistent with the Bible and destructive of liberty. Every thinking, honest man rejects it as speculation, but how few in practice from conscientious motives! Would any one believe that I am a master of slaves of my own purchase? ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam

... self-preservation and self-defence; a surrender of the rights and the trade of England to the mercy of plenipotentiaries, and, in this infinitely highest and sacred point, future security, not only inadequate, but directly repugnant to the resolutions of Parliament and the gracious promise from the throne. The complaints of your despairing merchants, the voice of England, have condemned it; be the guilt of it upon the head of its adviser! God forbid that this committee should share ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... Puranas and Epics, chiefly in their moderation. They may be classified under several heads. Many of them are mere embroidery or embellishment due to poetical exuberance, esteemed appropriate in those generous climates though repugnant to our chilly tastes. In every country poetry is allowed to overstep the prosaic borders of fact without criticism. When an ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot

... refuse it is for the State to decide upon. It may in an artisan State be used for soldiery (since such States commonly maintain but small armies and are commonly indifferent to military glory), or it may be set to useful labour, or again, destroyed; but this last use is repugnant to humanity, and so in the long ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc

... repugnant to the liberty of the reason, to the nature of the soul, to the inalterable rights of the conscience, to the essence of religion and of the ecclesiastical ministry, to all the rights ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... before his eyes, to give the English Catholics a proof of the moderation of his intentions. Even in Scotland he wished not to appear the sovereign of the Presbyterian party alone. It was absolutely repugnant to him to adopt the ideas of the Church entirely as his own. But the leaders of the Church were bent on shutting him within a narrow circle in accordance with their own ideas, from which there should be no escape. In his clemency to Catholic rebels they saw a leaning to ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke

... always happy nor always in torment; must there not be some tremendous change to bring about Paradise and Hell, two images without which God cannot exist to the mind of the vulgar? I know that a compromise was made by the invention of the Soul; but it is repugnant to me to make God answerable for human baseness, for our disenchantments, ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... been rather cold at first, but Herzog's amiability had thawed her. This man, with his slow speech and queer eyes, produced a fascinating effect on one like a serpent. He was repugnant, and yet, in spite of one's self one was led on. He, had at once introduced the grain question, but in this he found himself face to face with the real Madame Desvarennes; and no politeness held good on her part when it was a question of business. From his first words, she had found ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... my annoyance at the acceptance of the invitation, sent to us among the rest, at first simply because his looks were repugnant to me. Minna considered this very unjust. Anyhow, I set my face decidedly against continuing our acquaintance with this man, and although Minna did not insist on receiving him, my conduct towards the intruder was the cause of angry ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... of himself, more outwardly calm, more sure of his meaning. His voice is never boisterous; he expresses the most powerful thoughts with moderation. There is no gesticulation; exclamations, the abandonment of impulse, all that is irreconcilable with decorum is repugnant to his tact, his reserve, his dignity. He seems to be always addressing a select circle of people with acute minds, and in such a way as to render them at every moment conscious of their acuteness. No flattery could be more delicate; we feel grateful to him for making us ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... myself that she is very ill. If she awakes to a renewal of the same anguish, I dare not contemplate the consequences. You know that I do not love you, Mr. Barclay. I make no pretension to a change in my feelings; repugnant as it must be to a heart of sensibility, I must view this transaction as a matter of bargain and sale. I will accept your late offer, to save my mother from further suffering, and to gain a home ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... as dissipation had been, it was now absolutely repugnant to Alicia. She loathed the idea of mixing in scenes of amusement with a heart incapable of joy, a spirit indifferent to every object that surrounded her; and in solitude alone she expected gradually to regain her peace ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... neglect of defence, and her absorption in opulence. Were this the case, it would be ironical to reflect how the North Country homes, first and most cruelly scourged by the War, were homes to which the so-called "sins of society" were least known and most repugnant, and where military training had been long pursued in the teeth of public ridicule and at the sacrifice of leisure. Long afterwards the father of a very talented private (Arthur Powell), who was killed in Turkey, wrote of his son: "We never ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst

... did not stir. The idea of facing the insults and the curses of these enraged creditors was too repugnant to him. ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau

... to heaven," said the Countess, "that in the whole world there is not a man equal to him." "Not so," said Luned, "for an ugly man would be as good as, or better than he." "I declare to heaven," said the Countess, "that were it not repugnant to me to cause to be put to death one whom I have brought up, I would have thee executed, for making such a comparison to me. As it is, I will banish thee." "I am glad," said Luned, "that thou hast no other cause to do so, than that I would have been of service to thee where thou didst ...
— The Mabinogion • Lady Charlotte Guest

... repugnant to reason: to expend more than what Providence has allotted for us, and to die before our ordained time:—Whether offered up in gratitude, or uttered in complaint, destiny cannot be altered by a thousand sighs and lamentations. The angel who presides over the ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... among tattered velvet, bones, and dust, which time and mortality had strewn there. Of such horribly curious, and otherwise enterprising juveniles, Bob was, of course, the special scourge and terror. But terrible as was the official aspect of the sexton, and repugnant as his lank form, clothed in rusty, sable vesture, his small, frosty visage, suspicious grey eyes, and rusty, brown scratch-wig, might appear to all notions of genial frailty; it was yet true, that Bob Martin's severe morality ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... whose bloom is damaged by the rough air of reality, and the camp and the forecastle are not the stage. Perhaps nothing that is necessary shocks really sensible people; it is when disagreeable things are perfectly useless and quite avoidable—in theory—that they are most repugnant to men like Edmund Lushington. He had warned Margaret of what was in store for her, before she had taken the final step; but he had not warned himself that in spite of her bringing-up she might get used ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford

... best thing he could do toward securing his wished-for tranquillity, was immediately to put a period to the nuisance that disturbed it. But again the captain's easy good-nature recoiled from the task. The somewhat vigorous measures necessary to gain the desired result were utterly repugnant to him; he preferred to pocket his grievances, still retaining the privilege of grumbling about them. "Oh, anything for a quiet life!" he said again, circling back to ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... It was a revival of the ancient mysticism of Hugo de St. Victoire, of Honorius, and of Rupert in another and a scientific age; nor was it unopposed: in the place of the foreign scholasticism formerly so repugnant to its doctrines, those of Schelling were opposed by a reaction of the superficial mock-enlightenment and sophistical scepticism predominant in the foregoing century, more particularly of the sympathy with ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... fall of nations. He is like one who, having watched a tree grow from its planting—a paragon of tenacity, insulation, and success, amidst the deaths of a hundred other plants less fibrous, sappy, and persistent—one day will see it flourishing with bland, full foliage, in an almost repugnant prosperity, at the summit of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... ministers and church members of any city that falls for his methods. The preachers simply admit that they are not equal to the labor they are engaged in. They must have a buffoon, a mountebank, whose methods are repugnant to those who believe in the religion that is taught by the Bible. Billy Sunday creates excitement that carries some folks off their feet for the time being: no lasting results obtain. Those that will remember Billy ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... only break was when he misrepresented my action in subsidizing 'The Firefly.' I don't deny he was pretty mad at the idea of losing you, and jealousy will often drive a man to do a mean thing which might otherwise be repugnant to ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy

... our nature; and though details of it are not revealed, it is reasonable to believe that it will ultimately be attained. But eternal suffering is abnormal and repugnant. Especially is it so as we rise in the moral scale. As a worthy ultimatum it cannot be entertained. It is far more reasonable to believe that under the perfect government of God, sin and all its resulting pain will finally be ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio

... and Christianity has erased from the habits and institutions of modern Europe; yet never at any other period has so much energy, beauty, and virtue, been developed; never was blind strength and stubborn form so disciplined and rendered subject to the will of man, or that will less repugnant to the dictates of the beautiful and the true, as during the century which preceded the death of Socrates. Of no other epoch in the history of our species have we records and fragments stamped so visibly with the image of the divinity in man. But it is poetry alone, in form, in action, or in language, ...
— A Defence of Poetry and Other Essays • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... nor young dog, so much esteemed by Chinese and Russian epicures. It has neither the consistency nor the flavor of the mature animal, and somehow suggests unpleasant images of flabby innocence. There is something horribly repugnant to one's sense of humanity in killing and devouring a helpless little calf. Who but a cannibal can look the innocent creature in the face, with its soft confiding eyes, its gentle and baby-like manners, and calculate upon devouring its brains, or satisfying the cravings ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... severity and for strict formality, was against it. The whole case, then, depended on Skovorodnikoff's vote. And his vote was thrown against a reversal, principally for the reason that Nekhludoff's determination to marry the girl on moral grounds was extremely repugnant to him. ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... to be repugnant to Green to admit that feeling— pleasure—can be the direct object of action; and he denies roundly that a sum of pleasures can be made an object of desire and will at all (Prolegomena to Ethics, Sec 221; see Sec 113 of this book). Moreover, he maintains, and in this Dewey follows him, that ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton

... order, which is always and everywhere supreme over the temporal, since the spiritual order is the divine sovereignty itself. Always and everywhere, then, is the Pope independent of the emperor, his superior, and to subject him in any thing to the emperor would be as repugnant to reason as to subject the soul to the body, the spirit to the flesh, heaven to earth, ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson

... returned a troubled man, but with viewpoint shifting so imperceptibly he did not realize what was happening. On his way he decided to visit the hospital, repugnant as the thought was to him. From afar he was amazed at sight of the building. He knew instantly that it must have been the leading topic of conversation among his friends purposely avoided in his presence. Marble pillars and decorations ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter

... almost the beginning of his speculations; he had really paved the way for the evolutionary doctrine by his own proof of geological uniformity, but he shrank from accepting it, for its inevitable extension to the descent of man was repugnant to his feelings. Nevertheless, he would not allow sentiment to stand in the way of truth, and after the publication of the "Origin" it could ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... Tom, through his very helplessness, came to be a sort of pet in the family, a playmate, occasionally, of Mr. Oliver's own infant children. The boy, creeping about day after day in the hot light, was as repugnant an object as the lizards in the neighboring swamp, and promised to be of as little use to his master. He was of the lowest negro type, from which only field-hands can be made,—coal-black, with protruding heels, the ape-jaw, blubber-lips constantly open, the sightless eyes closed, and the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various

... the Palazzo Rossa in Genoa. Whoever has read the swan-song which Addison makes Cato sing, will not jeer at the sword half-buried in his abdomen. In our minds this mode of death is associated with instances of noblest deeds and of most touching pathos, so that nothing repugnant, much less ludicrous, mars our conception of it. So wonderful is the transforming power of virtue, of greatness, of tenderness, that the vilest form of death assumes a sublimity and becomes a symbol of new life, or ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... As stated above (AA. 3, 5, ad 1), the precepts of the decalogue are such as the mind of man is ready to grasp at once. Now it is evident that a thing is so much the more easily grasped by the reason, as its contrary is more grievous and repugnant to reason. Moreover, it is clear, since the order of reason begins with the end, that, for a man to be inordinately disposed towards his end, is supremely contrary to reason. Now the end of human life and society is God. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... worthless and designing men, who say everything with a view of pleasing, and nothing with regard to truth. Now while hypocrisy in all things is blamable (for it does away with all judgment of truth, and adulterates truth itself), so especially is it repugnant to friendship, for it destroys all truth, without which the name ...
— For Auld Lang Syne • Ray Woodward

... tried, as I am now, will find himself in a much worse case than when those cruel laws were in force. But I require you, honest men, who are to try my life, to consider these things. It is clear these judges are inclined rather to the times than to the truth, for their judgments are repugnant to the law, repugnant to their own principles, and repugnant to the opinions of their godly ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... that he should even imagine that she would continue her regard for him. Indeed she wondered and was almost enraged at herself that she could not at once blot out his image and dismiss him from her thoughts when he was taking the course of all others most repugnant to her. At such moments she could easily believe that all was over between them, but with quiet persistence her heart knew better, and preferred love ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... him," said Macdonald. "He has often enough compelled us to do what was repugnant to us. Come, gentlemen, let us go to the emperor." [Footnote: ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... objects, their exact similarity one to another, and the way in which they lie across and athwart each other (except where they form a sort of bridge across a spot, in which case they seem to affect a common direction, that, namely, of the bridge itself),—all these characters seem quite repugnant to the notion of their being of a vaporous, a cloudy, or a fluid nature. Nothing remains but to consider them as separate and independent sheets, flakes, or scales, having some sort of solidity. And these flakes, be they what they may, and whatever may ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... strong, honest youth, and the idea of meanness and duplicity were most repugnant to his feelings in general; and yet he listened eagerly to this proposition, for oppression had utterly changed his nature. The career of dissipation and pleasure proposed so adroitly by Daumon dazzled his imagination and his eyes began ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau

... confounded, did not know what answer to return to these arguments of Antonona, more atrocious than her former pinches. Besides, it was repugnant to him to discuss the metaphysics of ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera

... obedience implies necessity with regard to the thing commanded, nevertheless it implies free-will with regard to the fulfilling of the precept. And, indeed, such was Christ's obedience, for, although His Passion and death, considered in themselves, were repugnant to the natural will, yet Christ resolved to fulfill God's will with respect to the same, according to Ps. 39:9: "That I should do Thy will: O my God, I have desired it." Hence He said (Matt. 26:42): "If this chalice may not pass away, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... your birth and she never regained her former strength. When she rose from her bed it was with a shadow over her mind. I saw that she was unhappy and nervous in my presence. Indeed, I had at times to face the awful sensation of feeling that I was actually repugnant to her. She was especially irritable if I kissed or fondled you. She dropped all her friends; she never made calls; she refused to see callers. I consulted specialists and all the satisfaction I had was that she was of a peculiarly high-strung nature and that in certain phases of melancholia, ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer



Words linked to "Repugnant" :   obscene, repugnance, abhorrent



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