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Abhorrent   /æbhˈɔrənt/   Listen
Abhorrent

adjective
1.
Offensive to the mind.  Synonyms: detestable, obscene, repugnant, repulsive.  "The obscene massacre at Wounded Knee" , "Morally repugnant customs" , "Repulsive behavior" , "The most repulsive character in recent novels"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Abhorrent" Quotes from Famous Books



... By that proclamation our states are agin under their own control. Let em go at wunst to work to destroy all the vestiges uv the crooel war through wich they hev past. There aint no solgers now to interfere, for the policy uv keepin soldiers in and among free people is abhorrent to freedom and humanity. Go to work at wunst, and build up the broken walls uv ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby

... prophecy. The reasons are that the good old Israelitish virtue of brotherliness is dying away, that oppression and injustice are rampant (ii. 6-8, iii. 9, 10, iv. 1, v. 11, 12, viii. 4-6), and that rites are practised in the name of religion which are abhorrent to Yahweh, because they either have no moral meaning at all, and are mere forms (v. 21-23), or else, jndged from Amos's purified point of view, are absolutely immoral (ii. 7; cf. viii. 14). On the details of the captivity Amos preserves a mysterious vagueness. The ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... any interests in common except—except matters of the heart, and the shortest way to convince him was to tell him that my heart was elsewhere. I don't like lies, but there are some people who insist on lies—nothing else will convince them of the truth. Here comes some abhorrent preparation of rice. ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit

... and Hauntings, I never mention the Apparition by which I am pestered, the Phantom that shadows me about the streets, the image or spectre, so familiar, so like myself, and yet so abhorrent, which lurks in the plate-glass of shop-windows, or leaps out ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith

... when over half the world nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse men's minds asleep, and none but the wolf and the murderer is abroad. This was the time when lady Macbeth waked to plot the murder of the king. She would not have undertaken a deed so abhorrent to her sex, but that she feared her husband's nature, that it was too full of the milk of human kindness, to do a contrived murder. She knew him to be ambitious, but withal to be scrupulous, and not yet prepared for that height of crime which commonly ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... which is operative is indicated by the phrase that an international agreement on an economic and financial basis might be of value to China herself. The mere suggestion that such a thing is possible is abhorrent to many, especially to radicals. There seems to be something sinister in it. So it is worth explaining how and why it might be so. In the first place, it would obviously terminate the particularistic grabbing for "leased" ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey

... monotony of repetition. The words, too, were gabbled over in a manner anything but impressive. He was such a downright enemy to form, as substituted for religion, that any dash of untruth or unreality was abhorrent to him. When the last sounds died away in the cathedral we came out again into the cloisters, and sauntered about until the shadows fell over the beautiful enclosure. We were hospitably entreated, and listened to many an historical tale of ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... good, and character building, in its place. It is not strange that the wise and cultured of this world feel their aesthetic natures shocked by the blood of the Cross, yet entertain no sense of their own abhorrent pollution in the sight of the infinitely holy One. It is not strange that the world assumes to have advanced beyond that which is repeatedly said to be the manifestation of the wisdom of God; branding ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer

... luxury, but in poverty and wretchedness a people struggled; men walked to and fro in tattered garments, colored like unto their moral and physical degradation. But they heeded it not, and were careless because no one cared for them. There is no slavery so abhorrent as that of the menial who has no thought beyond the narrow sphere of his servitude, and the little pleasure which his light heart may transitorily enjoy. Here men saw no vitality in the hand that ruled: hence they maudled ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... partial immortality is abhorrent to me—I can use no other term. Pray conceive me rightly—'tis an abhorrence of the opinion, which does not include you for holding it; for though my whole being, moral and mental, revolts from certain notions, this is a mere necessity of my nature, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... had assured me of the plenitude of the universe. Yes, devotion, not to individuals but to the social ideal of brotherhood, sustains me still. Oh, what a magnificent example is to be found in Jesus and in the poor. That righteous aristocrat, showing by His abhorrent task the infinite obligation of altruistic duty, and teaching, above all, that no return of gratitude should be demanded. . . . To my experience of men and things I owe this tranquillity of expecting ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous

... admit herself to be wrong when she knows herself to be right. You would not have her confess to a fault, the very idea of which has always been abhorrent to her?" ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope

... now in whispers, and Ringfield told her in four short and to him abhorrent words. ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... said, "it is a thousand pities that you cannot come to Havana with me. The quality of being always virtuous—it is abhorrent, tres chere; correct it, if possible. And the garret cries out for us!" she said, turning away, with the straight line between her eyes that meant mischief, as Margaret had already learned. She turned to Peggy, who stood in some alarm, not ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards

... of the period show that the outcry against the concentration of capital was furious. Men believed that it threatened society with a form of tyranny more abhorrent than it had ever endured. They believed that the great corporations were preparing for them the yoke of a baser servitude than had ever been imposed on the race, servitude not to men but to soulless machines incapable of any motive but insatiable greed. Looking back, we ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... it did not, as far as might be judged by results, affect my actual performances. But I am, nevertheless, in a chronic state of what the B.E.F. calls "wind up" on account of this exam. I am so eager to do well that the mere thought of failing is abhorrent. I am inclined to ascribe these feelings at bottom ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones

... neighbourhood, to plunge into a bath of London multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of safety and apparent innocence—his bed. One visitor had come: at any moment another might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the deed, and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure. The money, that was now Markheim's concern; and as a ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson

... say to the members of that society that I am with them, heart and soul, in the cause of abolition; the abolition not of physical slavery alone, abhorrent and monstrous as it is, but of that intellectual slavery, the bondage of corrupt and mistaken opinion, which has fettered as with iron the moral energies and intellectual ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... water onto one of the tiny islands I was trembling like a leaf—you cannot imagine the awful horror which even the simple thought of the repulsive Mahars of Pellucidar induces in the human mind, and to feel that you are in their power—that they are crawling, slimy, and abhorrent, to drag you down beneath the waters and devour ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... medical gentleman, "that he was haunted by an apparition, to the actual existence of which he gave no credit, but died, nevertheless, because he was overcome and heart-broken by its imaginary presence."—"I, my dearest doctor," said the sick man, "am in that very case; and so painful and abhorrent is the presence of the persecuting vision, that my reason is totally inadequate to combat the effects of my morbid imagination, and I am sensible I am dying, a wasted victim to an imaginary disease." The medical gentleman listened with anxiety to his patient's statement, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott

... of the Hyperboreans cheek by jowl with asciutta and Tuscan tablewine, as any osteria will convince you. To one man the oil is a delight: he will soak himself in it till his thought swims viscid in his pate. To another it is abhorrent: straightway he calls for his German vinegar and drowns the native flavour in floods as bitter as polemics. Your wine too! Overweak for water, says one, who consumes a stout fiaschone and spends a stertorous afternoon ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett

... spite him," whereupon he snatched the book from Daubeny, and threw it entire into the flames. Poor Tracy had been even in more serious scrapes with Mr Paton than Walter had; his vain manner was peculiarly abhorrent to the master, who took every opportunity of snubbing him; but nothing would pierce through the thick cloak of Tracy's conceit, and fully satisfied with himself, his good looks, and his aristocratic connections, he sat down in contented ignorance, and despised learning too much ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... bound up in its first bundle of love and devotedness—as long as his affections remain reciprocated and uninterrupted—so long temptations cannot take effect. This heart is callous to the charms of others, and the very idea of bestowing his affections upon another is abhorrent. Much more so is animal indulgence, which is ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... a war trade from the humanitarian standpoint; between arming a neighbor by our exports in preparation for war and rearming him during war. In both cases we help him to kill. Now, if one regards all war as wrong, aid in waging war by trade in munitions, whether in peace time or war time, should be abhorrent to one's conscience. A Quaker gun is not only a paradox, but ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... their citizenship and their property, and of being driven into exile; and they must have been more or less than men had they not acted loyally and to the best of their ability with their protectors, however abhorrent to their views and feelings were many acts of the Indians—acts imitated and even excelled, in so many respects, by the Americans themselves, in their depredations ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... the thought to put an end to this maddening grief, by violence to period this miserable existence. But always he cast from him the horrible thought. He was not a coward, and the cowardice of suicide was abhorrent to him. Poverty he might leave her, but not the legacy of a suicide. If only it might be God's kindly will to let him die, once this abominable bargain was consummated! Death is the seal of silence; it locks alike the lips of the living and the dead. And she might ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath

... murders and attempted assassinations are abhorrent to the national mind, whatever its political views may be, and it will not seek to exterminate in any way the position of those who have any share ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various

... insensate mail, its fellow warrior? And have I brought home with me Victory, And with her, hand in hand, firm-footed Peace, 160 Her countenance twice lighted up with glory, As if I had charmed a goddess down from Heaven? But these will flee abhorrent from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... mouth can say Yes when the heart within is breaking; that she, like himself, had found the time to repent her folly? Was he the man to leave her thus; to acquiesce tamely in a decision that was doubtless already abhorrent to her; to remain with unlifted hand when she might be on fire for the sign to come to him? No, by God! he'd beg her forgiveness and offer her the choice. Yes or No! It was for ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne

... conscious sense of God's scrutiny, paradoxical as it may appear, is the surest means of producing a firm conviction in a guilty mind that God is merciful, and is the swiftest way of finding Him to be so. Opposed as the Divine nature is to sin, abhorrent as iniquity is to the pure mind of God, it is nevertheless a fact, that that sinner who goes directly into this Dread Presence with all his sins upon his head, in order to know them, to be condemned and crushed by them, and to confess them, is the one who soonest returns with ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd

... Honeythunder, in a kind of boisterous reverie, with his platform folding of his arms, and his platform nod of abhorrent reflection after each short sentiment of a word. 'Bloodshed! Abel! Cain! I hold no terms with Cain. I repudiate with a shudder the red hand when it is ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens

... dissolution of the monasteries harmonised well with the secular principles of these predominant classes. The monastic ideal of going out of the world to seek something, which cannot be valued in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, is abhorrent to a busy, industrial age; and every principle is hated most at the time when it ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... RUSSIA had given to one of her minions a large tract of country and several thousands of peasants as property, it very justly provoked indignation and abhorrence in those who heard it. But if we compare the mode practised in England, with that which appears to us so abhorrent in Russia, it will be found to amount to very near the same ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... proffered hand, and held it in silence, his face a study of perplexity and remorse. An Englishman hates to express his emotions, but to a generous nature the sting of ungratefulness is even more abhorrent. At that moment it seemed a little thing to spare a few months of strong, young life to gratify the whim of a dying man. Jack's heart reproached him, and he spoke ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... however honestly she may have offered her vote, however sincerely she may have believed that she had a right to vote, if she was mistaken in that judgment, her offering her vote and its being received makes a criminal offence—a proposition to me most abhorrent, as I believe it will be ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous

... human toil and the work of Nature—Pons was a slave to that one of the Seven Deadly Sins with which God surely will deal least hardly; Pons was a glutton. A narrow income, combined with a passion for bric-a-brac, condemned him to a regimen so abhorrent to a discriminating palate, that, bachelor as he was, he had cut the knot of the problem by dining ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac

... instance, this means that Caesar and Nero's mother both had a good deal to do with the Rhine; not that Caesar had a good deal to do with Nero's mother. I explain this because I should be sorry to convey any false impression concerning either the lady or Caesar. Scandal is a thing abhorrent to ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome

... day of the shopping expedition, throwing in the additional allurement of a cinematograph theatre and the prospect of light refreshment. As Cyprian was not yet eighteen she hoped he might not have reached that stage in masculine development when parcel-carrying is looked on as a thing abhorrent. ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki

... indiscretions, acts of harshness, and cruelty on the part of our troops may lead, step by step, to delays, to impatience, and exasperation, and in the end to a general war and carnage—a result in the case of these particular Indians, utterly abhorrent to the generous sympathies of the whole American people. Every possible kindness compatible with the necessity of removal must therefore be shown by the troops; and if in the ranks a despicable individual should be found capable of inflicting a wanton injury or insult on ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright

... Publication, normally abhorrent to Gray, thus became inevitable, though apparently not contemplated by Gray himself. The private success of the poem was greater than he had anticipated, and in February of 1751 he was horrified to receive a letter from the editor of a young and undistinguished periodical, "The Magazine ...
— An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript • Thomas Gray

... and who have been overcome and subdued, must either be dealt with so as to induce them voluntarily to become friends, or else they must be held by absolute military power, or devastated so as to prevent them from ever again doing harm as enemies, which last named policy is abhorrent to humanity ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various

... fortune but his name, the princely title of which the Tchereteff s, his ancestors, had been so proud, and which the daughter of wandering Tzigani refused with mingled hatred and disgust. Princess? She, the gypsy, a Russian princess? The title would have appeared to her like a new and still more abhorrent stigma. He implored her, but she was obdurate. It was a strange, tragic existence these two beings led, shut up in the immense castle, from the windows of which Tisza could perceive the gilded domes of Moscow, the superb city in which she would never set ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie

... vices of their patrons that they might secure a seat at their table, and who would sit through a long evening of profanity rather than bid good-bye to the cheesecakes and the wine flask. That such men represented religious truth was abhorrent to his mind, nor would he even give his adhesion to that form of church government dear to the Presbyterians, where a general council of the ministers directed the affairs of their church. Every man was, in his opinion, equal ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and scientific mind purposeless fiction is abhorrent. Fortunately we all are literally and scientifically inclined; the doom of purposeless fiction is sounded; and it is a great comfort to believe that, in the near future, only literary and scientific works suitable for man, woman, child, ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers

... interests were shamefully overlooked or cruelly forgotten;[92] although, in the first American war, the Indians had also, with few exceptions, taken part with Great Britain against the colonists in their contest for independence. It is true that their mode of warfare is abhorrent to Europeans, as differing from the more honorable slaughter of civilized enemies; but Sir Isaac Brock proved that they were to be restrained, and Tecumseh was as humane as he was brave. Moreover, we should ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper

... vague "Providence." The sentence means, leave Omnipotence to manage him. Mr. Redhouse, who forces a likeness between Moslem and Christian theology, tells us that "Qader is unjustly translated by Fate and Destiny, an old pagan idea abhorrent to Al-Islam which reposes on God's providence." He makes Kaza and Kismet quasi-synonymes of "Qaza" and "Qader," the former signifying God's decree, the latter our allotted portion, and he would render both by dispensation. Of course it is convenient to ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... abhorrent to young Ransome. So was the bowing of his head, the cramping of his limbs, and his sense of ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... business system contradict the law of love. In our present environment it is impossible for business people or working people to obey the Sermon on the Mount and not starve. Perhaps a few sacrifices of this kind are needed to teach us how abhorrent the present selfish system is to the Christianity of Christ. "I suppose I ought to be thankful to get the work at all, for they told other women they had no work left for them," said a woman to me who was making men's pantaloons for two dollars ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... it, was great and terrible to him; and he had not valiantly grappled with it, he had fled from it; sought refuge in vague daydreams, hollow compromises, in opium, in theosophic metaphysics. Harsh pain, danger, necessity, slavish harnessed toil, were of all things abhorrent to him. And so the empyrean element, lying smothered under the terrene, and yet inextinguishable there, made sad writhings. For pain, danger, difficulty, steady slaving toil, and other highly disagreeable behests of ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position. He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

... philosophy. Instead of seeing in these great thinkers of antiquity a yearning after that light which Christianity gives, he can see in them nothing but the deadliest enmity to Christianity. 'The Church of Christ is abhorrent in its plan and spirit from the systems of proud philosophers.' 'Moral philosophy and metaphysics have ever been dangerous to religion. They have been found to militate against the vital truths of Christianity and corrupt the gospel in our times, as much as the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... dress. Just think how reverend he must look! I believe he would even rather wear a sword and cocked hat, for he declares a white muslin cravat the last abomination, the chief enormity of fashion, and that all the natural feelings of a man cry out against it; and that it is alike abhorrent to taste and to sentiment. To all this I reply that he looks a great deal handsomer with white about his throat than with a stiff old black satin stock, which always to me looks like the stocks, and that it is habit only which makes him prefer it. . ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... of his enemies. She did the same good service to her favorite, Gonsalvo de Cordova; and the day of her death was felt, and, as it proved, truly felt by both, as the last of their good fortune. [33] Artifice and duplicity were so abhorrent to her character, and so averse from her domestic policy, that when they appear in the foreign relations of Spain, it is certainly not imputable to her. She was incapable of harboring any petty distrust, or latent malice; and, although stern in the execution and exaction ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... would marry and "settle down"; and to marry a woman with an income would be no special disadvantage. To sell one's thoughts was abhorrent to the young man, but to marry for money was quite another thing. Morality depends upon ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... in which Sally Pendleton had turned Miss Rogers from the house—which had been witnessed by the indignant young doctor—he called upon his betrothed, hoping against hope that she might be induced to relent, even at the eleventh hour, and let him off from this, to him, abhorrent engagement. ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey

... revolted and who have been overcome and subdued must either be dealt with so as to induce them voluntarily to become friends or else they must be held by absolute military power or devastated so as to prevent them from ever again doing harm as enemies, which last-named policy is abhorrent to humanity and to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson

... a jolly rambling old town, to our billet in a suburban villa on the Rebais road. The Division was marching past in the very best of spirits. We, who were very tired, endeavoured to make ourselves comfortable—we were then blanketless—on the abhorrent surface of ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson

... chief witness has been removed by death; while at the same time the nature of the punishment leads the jury unconsciously to require a higher degree of proof than in cases where the consequences are less abhorrent. All this is quite natural and inevitable. Moreover, homicide cases as a rule are better defended than others, a fact which undoubtedly affects the result. These considerations apply to all trials for homicide, notorious or otherwise, the results of which in New York County ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... born 1586: author of The Lover's Melancholy, Love's Sacrifice, Perkin Warbeck, and The Broken Heart. He was a pathetic delineator of love, especially of unhappy love. Some of his plots are unnatural, and abhorrent to a ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... he had received rankled in his heart. The idea that one man could rule a whole community was abhorrent and unnatural. He had no intention of leaving, and he was determined to meet Simon Stubbles and have it out with him face to face. Suppose he should be driven from the parish, how could he ever come back ...
— The Unknown Wrestler • H. A. (Hiram Alfred) Cody

... being justice and truth, must judge and condemn them: What else can I do?(771) The ethical necessity of the doom of the people is clear to the Prophet from a very early stage of his ministry,(772) and throughout, though his heart struggles against it. But, if possible, even more abhorrent to God than these sins against domestic and civic piety in themselves, is the fact that they are committed in the very face of His Love and despite all its pleading. With Jeremiah as with Hosea the sin against love is the most hopeless and ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... look beyond the enjoyment of the moment. Do not be alarmed: Lucien will never go so far as a crime, he has not the strength of character; but he would take the fruits of a crime, he would share the benefit but not the risk—a thing that seems abhorrent to the whole world, even to scoundrels. Oh, he would despise himself, he would repent; but bring him once more to the test, and he would fail again; for he is weak of will, he cannot resist the allurements of pleasure, nor forego the least of his ambitions. He is indolent, like all ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac

... was baptized." His spiritual eyes were now open; his sins washed away; and out of the baptismal stream he was visibly born into the church a new creature in Christ Jesus, with a new name. I hold the belief that Saul changed his name himself. His old life was now so abhorrent to him that he could no longer bear to hear the name by which he was called when pursuing that course of life. It was his desire to cast all recollection of it out of mind, and the old name with it. But he never did forget entirely. He calls himself the chief of sinners, and almost gets ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline

... respects, exceedingly unattractive. Indeed, it may truly be said to be in many respects repulsive. There are usually odours in such a camp which are repellent to the nose, dishes that are disgusting to the taste, sights that are disagreeable to the eyes, sounds that are abhorrent to the ear, and habits that are uncongenial to ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne

... on the verge of saying that J. Elfreda would have shown more wisdom by keeping silent, but suddenly checked herself. She had no right to criticize J. Elfreda's motives. To her the bare idea of telling tales was abhorrent, while this girl gloried in the fact that she had exposed those ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower

... be difficult to conceive any thing more abhorrent to the soul and body of man, than the time, manner, and place, of death, distinguishing those executions which have rendered the gulfs of the Canal Orfano ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various

... been presented to us of things so abhorrent to our ideas of humanity that they had seemed incredible, things we had been loath to believe, and with heavy hearts we had sought to reserve our judgment. But with the breaking of relations with the Government of Germany that duty ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various

... thing is not a nation, but an evil spirit, a spirit which has made the government possessed by it and executing its abhorrent and bloody bidding an abomination in the ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn

... out plants, when that person objected to having a flower in the same room. For Peter could not understand that a cut flower is a dead or, at best, a dying thing, and therefore to considerate people is just so much abhorrent carrion; and denied it would be really quite as rational to decorate your person or your dinner table with the severed heads of chickens as with ...
— The Cords of Vanity • James Branch Cabell et al

... mowed alone, Rag-wrapped, among the cattle in the fields, Counting his fingers, jesting with the trees, And mocking at the mist, until his God Drove him to labour. Out of dung and horns Dropped in the mire he made a monstrous God, Abhorrent, shapeless, crowned with plantain tufts, And when the cattle lowed at twilight-time, He dreamed it was the clamour of lost crowds, And howled among the beasts: "Thus Gods are made, And whoso makes them otherwise shall die." ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling

... of her misfortunes was of the most distressing nature, and was enough to stir up all the tender, as well as abhorrent feelings in the bosom of humanity. She had suffered every deprivation in fame, fortune, and person. She had been imprisoned; she had been scourged, and branded as an impostor; and all on account ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg

... nor the wretched music could spoil, those two figures made a harmonious and fascinating picture; to Stephen's view, naturally narrow and now darkened by the approaching blindness of a nascent passion, it was a sinful and abhorrent sight. When they floated silently close by him the second time, still lost in their dream of pleasure, and the girl's eyes fell upon him beneath their drooping lids, obviously without seeing him, he started up as if to plant himself ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross

... on Cuthbertson's inconsistency). Well, you know, this is unexpected: now it's really very unexpected. I should never have thought it from hearing you talk, Jo. Why, you said the whole modern movement was abhorrent to you because your life had been passed in witnessing scenes of suffering nobly endured and sacrifice willingly rendered by womanly women and manly men and deuce knows what else. Is it at the Ibsen club that you see all ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw

... very sorry to interrupt you when so agreeably employed, but necessity often compels us to do things abhorrent to our feelings; and as I have some important communications to make, which it is best for you to know immediately, I must beg to be permitted to disturb you for a few minutes. Perhaps it will be some compensation for the brief interruption to give ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison

... are twenty-six thousand human beings, fashioned in the image of God, the fitted temples of His Holy Spirit, held by the government in the abhorrent chains of slavery. The power to emancipate them is clear. It is indisputable. It does not depend upon the twenty-five slave votes in Congress. It lies with the free states. Their duty is before them: in the fear of God, and not of man ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... nomads pay to Jack Chapin's commands, once they learned the truth? They were Arabs who owed allegiance to no one but themselves, the country was wild, the law was feeble, it was twenty miles to the railroad! And, besides, the thought of confession was abhorrent. Physical injury, no matter how severe, was infinitely preferable to Helen Blake's disdain. He cast about desperately for some saving loophole, but found himself ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach

... did not quite see, I confess, how he could have obviated all the difficulties in the way of rendering them presentable to children. These old legends, so brimming over with everything that is most abhorrent to our Christianized moral sense some of them so hideous, others so melancholy and miserable, amid which the Greek tragedians sought their themes, and moulded them into the sternest forms of grief that ever the world saw; was such material the stuff that children's playthings ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... powers moved for me, That all the hosts of hell me welcome give, And claim me comrade in their revelry? Abhorrent things, I am not yours, I live, I know I live because I think on death! I live, dead things, to revel among tombs, A ghoul, henceforth I feast on buried joys, My soul the burial-place, where lie, beneath A fearful night of cries and hellish spumes, My lovely youth with ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer

... gigantic system of complicated evils, at war with all the known laws of civilized society; inimical to the fundamental principles of political economy; destructive to republican institutions; hateful in the sight of God, and ever abhorrent to all honest men. He hated slavery. He hated truckling, obsequious, cringing hypocrites. He put his feelings into vigorous English, and keyed his deeds and actions to the sublime notes of charity that ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams

... never watched football practice, so he had no conception of the efforts to which men could be goaded by "coaching". It was abhorrent—yet also it was fascinating, the spell of it got hold of him. He saw what these men were doing; they were learning to act in masses, to act with paralyzing and terrific force. Whatever it was they did, they did with the ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... because it is a law which conflicts with the Constitution of the country, and with all the judicial interpretations of that Constitution, wherever they have been applied to the white race. Because it is a law abhorrent to the moral and religious sentiments of a vast majority of the community called upon to enforce it. Because it is a law which, if executed in the Free States, divests them of the character of Free States, and makes them voluntary participators ...
— The Duty of Disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act - Anti-Slavery Tracts No. 9, An Appeal To The Legislators Of Massachusetts • Lydia Maria Child

... popular worship in a way fitted to stir up against him the bitterest hostility. The Meccans hear from him that the religion to which all Arabia flocks together, and without which they would do little trade, is not only a vanity but a thing abhorrent to Allah, and undoubtedly drawing down damnation on all who partake in it; and that their forefathers are unquestionably in hell. Such preaching could not be tolerated; Mahomet's friends are appealed to ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... blush, such was the fervor of his utterance. "But first you must win your spurs, Mr. Sheridan. I confess you are not abhorrent to me," she hurried on, "for you are the most fascinatingly hideous man I have ever seen; and it was always the apprehension that you might look on burglary as an unmaidenly avocation which has compelled me to discourage your addresses. Now all is plain; and should you happen ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... His only comfort at this time was the work he had begun in collecting Scottish songs for Johnson's Museum; touching up old ones and writing new ones to old airs. This with Burns was altogether a labour of love. The idea of writing a song with a view to money-making was abhorrent to him. 'He entered into the views of Johnson,' writes Chambers, 'with an industry and earnestness which despised all money considerations, and which money could not have purchased'; while Allan Cunningham marvels at the number of songs Burns was able to write at a time when a sort of ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun

... angels unawares? London! Grizel had more than sufficient money to take two there, and once in London, a wonder such as himself was bound to do wondrous things. Now that he thought of it, to become a minister was abhorrent to him; to preach would be rather nice, oh, what things he should say (he began to make them up, and they were so grand that he almost wept), but to be good after the sermon was over, always to be good (even when Elspeth was out of the way), never to think queer unsayable things, ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie

... fugitive slave law, and both times fined heavily. He believed there could be no virtue in a slave-owner; such a man was accursed of God, and should be accursed of men. His daughter had to a degree imbibed his sentiments, and the idea of slavery was abhorrent to her; but her heart was so gentle, she could hate no one. Calhoun's helplessness appealed to her sympathies, and she forgot he was one of Morgan's raiders. Although young, only eighteen, she had admirers by the score, but her father so far had forbidden her receiving company, considering ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn

... father had passed it; she could not endure the thought of it. She could not bring herself to speak of it—to denounce him. Sooner or later the Sentence would reach every Romany everywhere, and Jethro would pass into the darkness of oblivion, not in his own time nor in the time of Fate. The man was abhorrent to her, yet his claim was there. Mad and bad as it was, he made his claim of her upon ancient rights, and she was still enough a Romany to see his point ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... themselves were God's children. (132) Other nations they looked upon as God's enemies, and regarded with intense hatred (which they took to be piety, see Psalm cxxxix:21, 22): nothing would have been more abhorrent to them than swearing allegiance to a foreigner, and promising him obedience: nor could they conceive any greater or more execrable crime than the betrayal of their country, the kingdom of the ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza

... lingering, books also must Come to an End. It is abhorrent to their nature as to the life of man. They must be sharply cut off. Let it be done at once and fixed as by a spell and the power of a Word; ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc

... her husband in an aggrieved tone, "it is incomprehensible that you should have such a total disregard for the delicacy of my constitution,—especially when you know that the very odor of the stable is abhorrent to my olfactory senses. Atalanta has quarters provided for her at the Vernon Livery, and one of the grooms has orders to bring the carriage to the door at two o'clock ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black

... worth a nature not moulded on conventional lines. Rigorous as he was in his judgments, and eager to disown what was cheap or shallow, mere conventionalism, whether in art or daily life, was no less abhorrent to him. Here, he said to himself, was an original soul, ignorant and unenlightened perhaps, but endowed with swift perception and capable of ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... maxims of the critical school to which he belonged, made him mistake for spurious decoration the efflorescence of that warm, creative fancy which ran riot in Gothic art. The grotesque, which was one expression of this sappy vigor, was abhorrent to Addison. The art and poetry of his time were tame, where Gothic art was wild; dead where Gothic was alive. He could not sympathize with it, nor understand it. "Vous ne pouvez pas le comprendre; vous avez ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... of Christians to Pagan masters was abhorrent to the later empire of the Barbarian Invasions, not because slavery in itself was condemned, but because it was a sort of treason to civilization to force men away from Civilization ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... led to believe, that oatmeal is the staple commodity of Scotland, and that the highly favoured Scotch have the exclusive privilege of supplying the miserable creatures whom the fortune of war has thrown into the hands of the English, with this national dish, so delicious to Scotchmen, and so abhorrent ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... Virginian perfume, yet cultivated womanhood barely tolerates the choicest tobacco-smoke, even in its freshness, and utterly recoils from the stale suggestions of yesterday. By whatever enthusiasm misled, she finds something abhorrent in the very nature of the thing. In vain did loyal Frenchmen baptize the weed as the queen's own favorite, Herba Catherinae Medicae; it is easier to admit that Catherine de' Medici was not feminine than that tobacco is. Man also recognizes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... thought of marrying anybody is unwelcome to me now; and the idea of being married to Grim is abhorrent; is like that of being sold to a master that I hate, or sent to prison for life; it is full of ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... O'PICTON, and feeble flagellation from FLYNN. Then Prince ARTHUR suddenly, unexpectedly, dashes in. Empty benches fill up; stagnant pool stirred to profoundest depths: ARTHUR professes to be tolerant of Irish Members, but declares himself abhorrent of connivance of Right Hon. Gentleman above Gangway. Talks at Mr. G., who begins visibly to bristle before our very eyes as he sits attentive on Front Bench. ARTHUR in fine fighting trim; Ministerial bark may be labouring in troubled waters; a suddenly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various

... not know to have been paralyzed and killed by a surfeit in the frail early stages of their existence! Inexperienced as I was, my learning in humanity was wiser than the experience of my impulsive, generous, magnanimous lover, to whom the very thought of calculation would have been abhorrent. But I saw, I felt, I lived through in a few seconds the interminable and monotonous length of those calm days, and especially those calm evenings succeeding each other with a formidable sameness. I had watched great loves faint and die. ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett

... of gentle breath. 'This spirit tender' is the 'quickening life' of the renascent year; or briefly the Spring. By 'the leprous corpse' Shelley may mean, not the corpse of an actual leper, but any corpse in a loathsome state of decay. Even so abhorrent an object avails to fertilize the soil, and thus promotes the growth of ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... trouble, bring her back with you and do all you can for her: it would be cruel and heartless to refuse her consolation if she is all this old man describes—and you are not cruel and heartless. And if this drop of black blood is abhorrent to you, think what it must be to her. It is enough to torment a high-strung woman into insanity or suicide. On the other hand, if she is common, or looks as if she had a violent temper, or is conceited and self-sufficient like so many of that hybrid race, settle an income on her and ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... in this first bereavement of her life, sleep was as abhorrent as if her brother's burial were already at hand. Grief was good, for grief was love. Sleep was heartlessness. Moreover, in sleep, only in sleep, there was no growth. Of course, that was not true; only yesterday and ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... satisfactory proof." He then recites in detail the adverse external testimony which his predecessors had accumulated; remarking, that it is abundantly confirmed by internal evidence. Of this he supplies a solitary sample; but declares that the whole passage is "abhorrent" to S. Mark's manner. "The facts of the case being such," (and with this he dismisses the subject,) "a healthy piety reclaims against the endeavours of those who are for palming off as Mark's what the Evangelist is so plainly shewn to have known nothing at all ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon

... some villainous-looking countenances in my time, but none more abhorrent of aspect than was that of Pablo Garcia, as, distorted with rage, he started on seeing Lilla resting half supported by me. The handsome regularity of his features seemed then to have the effect of making the distortion ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... re-admitted him to her society. Insensibly, however, perhaps in despite of his struggle to overcome his amorous propensities, the Chevalier violated the conditions of the truce. Ninon, on the watch for a repetition of his former manifestations, quickly perceived the return of a love so abhorrent to nature. His sighs, glances, sadness when in her presence, were signs to her of a passion that she would be compelled to subdue with ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... me the other day that it had taken her a long time to appreciate Chesterton's sociology. "You see, I was brought up to think that it was quite right for the poor to have their teeth brushed by officials." This is undoubtedly the normal Socialistic outlook and the outlook most abhorrent to Chesterton. "The philanthropist," he once said, "is not a brother; he ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... the elder brother has cared secretly all these years, not permitting the knowledge of his existence to get abroad, lest the unfortunate man should be removed forcibly, and sent to what is the only asylum for him now that his guardian is dead—the abhorrent Terre aux Lepreux.—George W. ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... proposuit Imperator nuncios suos nobiscum mittere. Volebat tamen, vt credimus, quod nos id ab eo peteremus. Sed cum vnus de Tartaris nostris, qui senior erat, nos ad hoc petendum hortaretur, nobis quidem, vt venirent, ne quaquam bonum videbatur. [Sidenote: Legate abhorrent a Tartarorum ad Christianos legatione.] Ideoque respondimus ei, quod non erat nostrum petere, sed si sponte ipse Imperator mitteret eos, libenter eos secure conduceremus, Domino adiuuante. Nobis autem ob plures causas vt venirent, non ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt

... not being good to servants! and it don't take more'n half an eye to see that the servants love their white people. For slavery itself, I ain't quarrelling for it, and neither was Colonel Anderson. He said it was abhorrent in the sight of God and man. He said the old House of Burgesses used to try to stop the bringing in of negroes, and that the Colony was always appealing to the king against the traffic. He said that in 1778, two years after Virginia ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston

... any authentic source to endow the negro with the right of suffrage, and was an indirect but most effective answer to those who subsequently attempted to use Mr. Lincoln's name in support of policies which his intimate friends instinctively knew would be abhorrent to his unerring ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... mood which had possession of me the thought of dinner would have been abhorrent. For the rest of the evening I kept my room, meditating many things, and becoming more and more desirous of learning Carson Wildred's secret, if secret indeed ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson

... under a royal charter. But the idea of turning over a great block of territory, with its inhabitants, to a corporation whose sole aim is to earn dividends for its absentee stockholders, is in itself abhorrent to most Americans. What would we say, I ask you, if Porto Rico, which is only one-tenth the size of North Borneo, were to be handed over, lock, stock and barrel, to the Standard Oil Company, with full authorization for that company ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... man, being delivered by an immediate death from such an inextricable scene of distress, and wished myself with him a thousand times. I had a great mind to have followed him into the other world; yet I know not how it is, there is something so abhorrent to human nature in self-murder, be one's condition what it will, that I was soon determined on the contrary side. Now again I perceived that the Almighty had given me a large field to expatiate in upon the trial of His creatures, by bringing ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... him, while he partook of soup—asked him with an amiability of intention beyond all praise, but with a weakness of execution open to defeat—what kind of river he considered the Ganges, the Long-lost, scowling at the friend of the family over his spoon, as one of an abhorrent race, replied, 'Why, a river of water, I suppose,' and spooned his soup into himself with a malignancy of hand and eye that blighted the amiable questioner. Not an opinion could be elicited from the Long-lost, in ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens

... no copy, then a proof by witnesses who have heard the deed: and yet it is a thing the law abhors, to admit the memory of man for evidence." This enlargement through two stages of proof, both of them contrary to the rule of law, and both abhorrent from its principles, are by this great judge accumulated upon one another, and are admitted from necessity, to accommodate human affairs, and to prevent that which courts are by every possible means instituted to prevent,—A FAILURE OF JUSTICE. And this necessity is ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... matter."—"But term it as you will," replied Peter, "I do not see any other way in which you can be so useful, both in private to your friends, and to the public, and by which you can make your own condition happier."—"Happier!" answered Raphael, "is that to be compassed in a way so abhorrent to my genius? Now I live as I will, to which I believe few courtiers can pretend. And there are so many that court the favour of great men, that there will be no great loss if they are not troubled either ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... since—between you and me—you will find these fellows about here such sharks that you will have to part with every fish in your basket before you will get an opportunity of reporting yourself. For my part, I detest such greediness; nothing is more abhorrent to a sensitive soul like mine; I consider that it ought to be baulked and discouraged in every way; and in order to aid in so good a work as far as possible I will just take this—and this—and these three—under my own care. And now—good-bye, comrade—nay, ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... but there has been some success, and with it I have let the past drop off me, and turned my back on it. That butler seems a far-away figure to me now, and not myself. I hail him, but we scarce know each other. If I am to bring him back it can only be done by force, for in my soul he is now abhorrent to me. But if I thought it best for you I'd haul him back; I swear as an honest man, I would bring him back with all his obsequious ways and deferential airs, and let you see the man you call your Gov. melt for ever into him ...
— The Admirable Crichton • J. M. Barrie

... so seemly for us to drive thither, as a matter of course. It would be what the communerty expects of us. This is not our day, that we should spend it carnally. We should be spiritually-minded. We should put away things of earth. Thoughts of business and any unnecessary toil should be abhorrent. I have often thought that there was too much milking done on Sunday among farmers. I know they say it is essential, but they all seem so prone to forget that but one thing is needful. I feel it borne in upon my mind, Mr. Holcroft, that I should plead with you to attend ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... "whether they were needed, or whether they were not," to the delight and admiration of the Irish staff. For pure extravagance, for pure pagan delight in extravagance, the Irishman and woman are hard to beat. The very warmth and generosity of their nature makes it abhorrent to them to stint in any direction, which is one reason, out of many, for the ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey

... fierce, Amazonian creature!" I told myself, who had (abhorrent thought) already attempted one man's life to-night; furthermore, a tall woman, and strong (therefore unmaidenly), with eyes that gleamed wild in the shadow of her hair. And yet my dismay arose not so much from any of these as from the fact that she was a woman, and, consequently, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol

... in these Magi, too, a type of the inmost meaning of heathen religions? These faiths have in them points of contact with Christianity. Besides their falsehoods and abhorrent dark cruelties and lustfulnesses, they enshrine confessions of wants which the King in the cradle alone can supply. Modern unbelieving teachers tell us that Christianity and they are alike products of man's own religious faculty. But the truth is that they are confessions ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... been enacted in the narrow gorge of St. Cergues, and what, oh! what had become of my hopes of that five thousand francs for the apprehension of the smugglers, promised me by Leroux? Can you wonder that for the moment the very thought of dinner was abhorrent to me? But only for the moment. The next a sumptuous valet had thrown open the folding-doors, and down the vista of the stately apartment I perceived a table richly laden with china and glass and silver, whilst a distinctly savoury odour was ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... this—the worst manifestations of vice are first proscribed, and then their proscription is made a stepping-stone to demolish others. For instance—we attack gambling with cards, the worst manifestation of the gambling principle; we make it abhorrent to the moral sense of the world; we so confound it, and justly too, with robbery, that future generations shall grow up in that faith, and all the efforts of interested sophistry never be able henceforward to separate them to the popular apprehension. Having done this, in ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green

... something, for the representatives of predatory wealth, of wealth accumulated on a giant scale by iniquity, by wrongdoing in many forms, by plain swindling, by oppressing wage-workers, by manipulating securities, by unfair and unwholesome competition and by stock-jobbing,—in short, by conduct abhorrent to every man of ordinarily decent conscience, have during the last few months made it evident that they are banded together to work for a reaction, to endeavor to overthrow and discredit all who honestly ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... coast His fair Creusa mourn'd, for ever lost; Yet cut the bonds of Love on Tyber's shore, And bought a bride with young Evander's gore. Here droop'd the victim of a lawless flame: The amorous frenzy of the Cretan dame He fled abhorrent, and contemn'd her tears, And to the dire suggestion closed his ears. But nought, alas! his purity avail'd— Fate in his flight the hapless youth assail'd, By interdicted Love to Vengeance fired; And by his father's ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... know her? Haven't I been raving about her for days? Haven't you vowed she belonged to the type abhorrent to you? Haven't I had to endure your reflections on my sanity because of the adjectives I've employed to describe her attractions? Haven't you been laughing at your own mother and myself ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan

... penetrate to its most hidden corner, and to draw out into the full light of day one of her most sacred possessions. She felt that she could not bear this probing. The very thought of it was horrible to her, and in connection with it the steady scrutiny of her husband's eyes became almost a thing abhorrent. Vaguely she knew, without realizing, that she cherished deep in that inmost shrine something which he must never see, something that it would be agony to show him, something that even now gnawed secretly at her quivering heart. She always shrank from his direct look, though ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... polygamy than in monogamy. Thus, as a practice that runs strongly counter to one of the great purposes of marriage, and is, to say the least, no help to the other, and carries with it the humiliation of the female sex, polygamy is justly argued to be abhorrent ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... so carrying her, that her eyes, if she should open them, could not encounter the horrid spectacle below, again rapidly descended, and hurried towards the house. Maria Heywood, on passing the rose-tree so recently prized, but now so abhorrent to her sight, could not resist a strong impulse to look upon the mysteries so strangely unveiled, but although the twilight had not yet passed away, nothing could be seen but the displaced earth, and stretched over the excavation he himself had made, ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson

... it in the 'Plymouth Collection,' abhorrent as was the theology of that hymn alike to his heart ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... content to rest their conclusions on the positively known, who, while not setting any limits to the possible extension of knowledge, are not prepared to dogmatize about it, it is still necessary to draw a line. A dualism remains, name and fact alike abhorrent to the completely logical philosophic mind. On the one hand the ordinary laws of physical science are constantly extending their sphere; on the other, the fact of life still remains unexplained by them, and becomes in itself more and more marvellous ...
— Progress and History • Various



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