"Detestable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slightest surprise.* (* "When the poor began to eat human flesh, the horror and astonishment caused by repasts so dreadful were such that these crimes furnished the never-ceasing subject of every conversation. But at length the people became so accustomed to it, and conceived such a taste for this detestable food, that people of wealth and respectability were found to use it as their ordinary food, to eat it by way of a treat, and even to lay in a stock of it. This flesh was prepared in different ways, and the practice being once introduced, spread into the provinces, so that instances ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... imagination, and not his learning; makes a story instead of an argument, and, in the course of 150 pages (where the preacher has it all his own way) will prove or disprove you anything. And, to our shame be it said, we Protestants have set the example of this kind of proselytism—those detestable mixtures of truth, lies, false sentiment, false reasoning, bad grammar, correct and genuine philanthropy and piety—I mean our religious tracts, which any woman or man, be he ever so silly, can take upon ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a special value that is now lost. It must then belong to primitive man, and not to civilised man, and must be judged by the standard of morals belonging to primitive man. It is not sufficient, or, indeed, in any way to the point, to say that the idea of marrying one's own daughter is horrible and detestable to modern ideas; we must place ourselves in a position to judge of such a state of affairs from an altogether different standpoint. And what do we find in primitive society? We find that women were the property, not the helpmates, of their husbands. And the question ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... and heightened; the Elizabethan style, regnant in most of our dramatic poetry to this day, is mainly the continuation of this manner of Shakespeare's. It was a manner much more turbid and strewn with blemishes than the manner of Pindar, Dante, or Milton; often it was detestable; but it owed its existence to Shakespeare's instinctive impulse towards style in poetry, to his native sense of the necessity for it; and without the basis of style everywhere, faulty though it may in some ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... what we need to enliven this detestable place is the presence of Beauty herself. Our worthy friends should be back soon—bringing their sheaves with them, let us hope, for otherwise matters will be complicated. Let me see: have I thought ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... which have restrained or prohibited the importation of slaves, it is only done by legislative acts, which may be repealed. When those States find that they must, in their national character and connexion, suffer in the disgrace, and share in the inconveniences attendant upon that detestable and iniquitous traffic, they may be desirous also to share in the benefits arising from it; and the odium attending it will be greatly effaced by the sanction which is given to it in ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... sea-breezes, was gathered up in a luxuriant mass behind her graceful head, and from the forehead it was drawn back in two wavy bands, in defiance of fashion, which at that time was beginning to introduce the detestable modern fringe. Perhaps we are not quite un-biassed in our judgment of the said fringe, far it is intimately associated in our mind with the savages of North America, whose dirty red faces, in years past, were wont to glower at us from beneath just such a fringe, long before it was adopted ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... nineteenth, on which hundreds of citizens had fallen at Montretout, at Garches, and at Buzenval. Thanks to the want of foresight of the Government, the people of Paris were rationed to 300 grammes of detestable black bread a day for each person. All representations made to them had been in vain. Ration our bread by degrees, had been said, we should thus accustom ourselves to privation, and be prepared insensibly, for greater sufferings, while the duration of our provisions would be lengthened. But ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... "Bad—detestable. You will give the letters—you will receive them. Oh! we must have no pride in this affair, otherwise M. Malicorne and Mademoiselle Aure, not transacting their own affairs themselves, will have to make up their minds to see them ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... escape the torments of conscience? No forest is dark enough! No rocky cavern deep enough! O, earth, open and swallow me up! I can no longer exist. O, my dear Master! Him, best of all men, have I sold, giving him up to ill treatment, to a most painful death of torture. I, detestable betrayer—oh! where is there another man on whom such guilt of blood doth rest? Alas! nevermore can I appear before the face of the brethren. An outcast, hated and abhorred everywhere—branded as a traitor by those who led me astray—I wander about alone with this ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... gashed his ear so that the blood mingled with the rain that poured down his face. A pod of the fishhook-barbed cholla drove its points through his trousers into the flesh of his knee and, detaching itself from the stem, as is the detestable habit of this vegetable blood-seeker, clung there like a live thing of prey, from barbs which must later be removed delicately and separately with the cold steel. Blindly homing, a jack-rabbit ran almost beneath the horse's hooves, causing him to shy again, this time into a bulky vizcaya, as big ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the sweetest of sing-songers—and his silver voice "warbled melody." Next to theirs, we believe our own recitation of Poetry to be the most impressive heard in modern times, though we cannot deny that the leathern-eared have pronounced it detestable, and the long-eared ludicrous; their delight being in what is called Elocution, as it ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... knowledge that she had taken her life in her own hands nearly twenty years ago, and wrecked it more surely than if she had torn out her own eyes, that made her heart sick within her now. She, who loved dignity, who loved purity, who loved strength, must carry to her grave the knowledge of her own detestable weakness! She must instruct her daughter, guarding the blue eyes and the active mind from even the knowledge of life's ugly side, she must hold the highest standard of purity before her son, knowing, as she knew, that far back at her life's beginning, were those few hideous weeks that, in the ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... noon. He comes to sign the contract—to make me the Marchioness of Sbrufadelli. Oh!" It was a cry of pain from that tender young heart. "The very name burns my lips. If it were mine I could never utter it—never! The man is so detestable. Save me, Leandre. Save me! You ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... been one of the Strasburg conspirators, was particularly unmanageable; and late in the afternoon he insisted on going ashore to buy some cigars, saying that those on board were detestable. In vain Persigny and Orsi, who in the prince's absence considered themselves to be in command, assured him that to land was impossible; Parquin would not recognize their authority. The rest of the story I will tell in Count Orsi's own words. He wrote his account ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... suffer from weak sight, and are obliged to wear coloured glasses, let them be of blue or smoke colour. Green are detestable. ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... he reached out away from her, toward Nagor, toward the ship. He fought his way out through the Shielding, away from her and her thoughts and every detestable thing about her. ...
— The Very Secret Agent • Mari Wolf
... handful of roses. There is another picture wonderfully fine in the same style by Agostino Caracci. This fashion of varying the attitude of the Virgin was carried in the later schools to every excess of affectation. In a picture by Lanfranco. she cleaves the air like a swimmer, which is detestable. ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... 'what most beastly and nauseous thing is this? Oh,' he said, 'what detestable drug is this? Oh, oh,' he said, 'I shall never, never, get this horrible ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... to preserve a proper Dignity of Behaviour, whereby to awe the Presumption of the Bold and Forward: So that, while we behold them as Angels of Light, they would be pleased not to give too convincing Evidence of their Fall from that to a lower Character; a detestable one too, which will in a short time sink them as much in the Esteem of their flattering Admirers, as those very Deceivers had before persuaded them, that they were elevated above the common ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... appear to be distressed. But the Council of Regency will no doubt take a different view. It will rejoice in the departure of a man whose military operations it finds so detestable. You will no doubt discover this when you come to lay Lord Wellington's decision before the Council, as I ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... temper of Voltaire from the fussy self-love and neurotic introspections of our modern egoists. The new fashionable doctrine among the "intellectuals" is that one is to live in one's ivory tower and let the world go; live in one's ivory tower while brutal and detestable people tyrannise over the gentle and sensitive; live in one's ivory tower while the heavy hand of popular ignorance lies like a dead weight upon all that is fine and rare; live in one's ivory tower while ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... away from Fredonia ashamed of myself; —almost too much humiliated to hold up my head and say good-bye. For I began to comprehend how much harm my conduct might do you socially in your village. I would have gone to that detestable oyster-brained bore and apologized for my inexcusable rudeness to him, but that I was satisfied he was of too small a calibre to know how to receive an apology ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... case, I will obey him with the dog-like submission I profess," said Esther, putting her hand through Lucien's arm and leading him into her bedroom, saying, "At any rate, I hope you dined well, my Lulu, at that detestable Baron's?" ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... its riders had become suddenly detestable to the wanderer; he would not run the risk of seeing that insolently joyous cavalcade come galloping past again. Beyond a narrow stretch of tree-shaded grass lay the placid sunlit water of the Serpentine, and ...
— When William Came • Saki
... hurts me more than it hurts you." There must be hypocrisy as well as cruelty. The injury to the child would be far less if the voluptuary said frankly "I beat you because I like beating you; and I shall do it whenever I can contrive an excuse for it." But to represent this detestable lust to the child as Divine wrath, and the cruelty as the beneficent act of God, which is exactly what all our floggers do, is to add to the torture of the body, out of which the flogger at least gets some pleasure, the maiming and blinding of ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... and purchased the support of the praetorians with bribes and flatteries. Thus he was enabled for ten years to retain the throne, while perpetrating all manner of cruelties, and staining the imperial purple with the most detestable debaucheries and crimes. ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... with a thick chuckle. And Lanyard's jaws ached with the strain of self-control. He continued to pluck at the folds of silk while concentrating in effort to memorise the voice, which he failed utterly to place. Undoubtedly this animal was a shipboard acquaintance, one who knew him well; but those detestable German gutturals disguised his accents quite ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... him, Grandmamma had signified to him her dislike for corporal punishment, and therefore he dared not beat us, but he frequently THREATENED us, particularly myself, with the cane, and would utter the word fouetter as though it were fouatter in an expressive and detestable way which always gave me the idea that to whip me would afford him the greatest ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... flowers, its avenues of trees through which run the streets, its gardens, its pines and cactus and aloe walks? Only one blemish can I pick out in Nice, and that is a hideous modern Gothic church, Notre Dame, filled with detestable garish glass, so utterly faulty in design, so full of blemish of every sort, that the best wish one could make for the good people of Nice is that the next earthquake that visits the Riviera may shake this wretched structure to pieces, so as to give them an opportunity of erecting ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... eleves de la patrie. The abbe, become a member of the Committee of Public Safety, denounced Madame de Fleury, in the strange jargon of the day, as "the fosterer of a swarm of bad citizens, who were nourished in the anticivic prejudices de l'ancien regime, and fostered in the most detestable superstitions, in defiance of the law." He further observed, that he had good reason to believe that some of these little enemies to the constitution had contrived and abetted Monsieur de Fleury's escape. ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... and without shame or scruple, celebrates the worthless, dignifies the mean, and gives to the corrupt, licentious, and oppressive, the ornaments which ought only to add grace to truth, and loveliness to innocence? Every other kind of adulation, however shameful, however mischievous, is less detestable than the crime of counterfeiting characters, and fixing the stamp of literary sanction upon the dross and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... brute that lived! Of all creatures most to be stampeded by fear into a callous torturer! 'Fear'—thought Felix—'fear! Not momentary panic, such as makes our brother animals do foolish things; conscious, calculating fear, paralyzing the reason of our minds and the generosity of our hearts. A detestable thing Tryst has done, a hateful act; but his punishment will be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... favour, it is the Corporation of London. He connects it with hereditary abuses perfectly preserved, with large revenues imperfectly accounted for, with a system which stops the principal city government at an old archway, with the perpetuation of a hundred detestable parishes, with the maintenance of a horde of luxurious and useless bodies. For the want of all which makes Paris nice and splendid we justly reproach the Corporation of London; for the existence of much of what makes London mean and squalid we justly reproach it too. Yet the Corporation ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... increase of pay would be beneficial in this respect, but only if given in the form of an additional allowance for each living child. In the hope of increasing the birth rate attempts were likely to be made to exalt the "unmarried wife," a detestable term against which all true wives should protest. If a change in moral standards was demanded in the hope that an increase in the habit of forming irregular unions would result in an increase in the population, that plea entirely ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... die, wearing all their lives after a kind of mourning dress, and smearing their faces with charcoal dust and grease, as thick as the back of a knife, by which they are known to be widows. They have a detestable custom with regard to their young women, who are all placed together in one house as soon as they are marriageable, where they remain as harlots for all who please to visit them, till such time as they may find a match. I assert this from experience, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... Luther and his followers, not satisfied with opposing the pretended divinity of the Romish church, and displaying the temporal inconveniences of that establishment, carried matters much further, and treated the religion of their ancestors as abominable, detestable, damnable; foretold by sacred writ itself as the source of all wickedness and pollution. They denominated the pope Antichrist, called his communion the scarlet whore, and gave to Rome the appellation of Babylon; expressions which, however applied, were to be found in Scripture, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... high, as even the so much upbraided View it self; All but the Willfully blind must see, that even the Gayeties of France could not endure the Corruptions of the Modern Theatres. And that the Complaints against such detestable Abuses are not due to any Quality of the Climate, or particular turn of Temper; but to the common and uniform Principles of Christianity and Virtue, which are the same in every Nation, professing to be ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... a detestable English opera, which is crowded by all true lovers of their country. To mark the opposition to Italian operas, it is sung by some cast singers, two Italians, and a French girl, and the chapel boys; and to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... author, is but an indication of dislike to a caste degraded by servitude and ignorance; and it is not perceived how it proves the despotism of a majority over the freedom and independence of opinion. If it be true, it proves a detestable tyranny over acts, over the exercise of an acknowledged right. The apprehensions of a mob committing violence deterred the colored voters from approaching the polls. Are instances unknown in England ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... of him, and Cicero, as Middleton says, "made a reply to him on the spot in an invective speech, the severest, perhaps, that ever was spoken by any man, on the person, the parts, the whole life and conduct of Piso, which as long as the Roman name subsists must deliver down a most detestable character of him to ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... appear to be gliding deliciously over the roughest ploughed fields, with or without legs according to circumstances. Before we start, I fix on the place where tea and a sleigh are to meet us, and we drive home again; because skating against the wind is as detestable as skating with it is delightful, and an unkind Nature arranges its blowing without the smallest regard for our convenience. Yesterday, by way of a change, we went for a picnic to the shores of the Baltic, ice-bound at this season, and ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... accept even a harsh sentence than to set an evil example of disobedience by which others might be led to their ruin. In 1167 the clergy had been called to London to swear fealty to the anti-Pope; but "as the bishops refused to take so detestable an oath against God and the Pope, this unlawful and wicked business came to an end." The bishops had obeyed the excommunication of Foliot by the Primate; they had refused to join in his appeal to Rome or to hold ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... save the great truths he had discovered by his letters to the Benedictine Castelli and the Grand-Duchess Christine, in which he argued that literal biblical interpretation should not be applied to science; it was answered that such an argument only made his heresy more detestable; that he was ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... the evening about, five." Majesties wait at Berlin, with their Party,—among whom, say the old Newspapers, "is his Royal Highness the Crown-Prince:" Crown-Prince just come in from Custrin; just blessed with the first sight of his Charmer, whom he finds perceptibly less detestable ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... profound, Unfathomable to plummet cast by man? Alas; for who can tell! Whence comes the wind Heaving the ocean into maddened arms That clutch and dash huge vessels on the rocks, And scatter them, as if compacted slight As little eggs boys star against a tree In wanton mischief? Whence, detestable, To man, who suffers from the monster-jaws, The power that in the logging crocodiles' Outrageous bulk puts evil fire of life? That spouts from mountain-pyramids a flood Of lava, overwhelming works and men In burning, fetid ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... that she knew no part of the mischiefe, devised with her selfe how she might be revenged on the traitor, and finish her owne life to end and knit up all sorrow. Incontinently came Thrasillus, the detestable demander of sodaine pleasure, and wearied the closed eares of Charites with talke of marriage, but she gently refused his communication, and coloring the matter, with passing craft in the middest of his earnest desires gan say, Thrasillus ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... the fault of object lessons, but that of the teacher, who has not found out how much the power of teaching a little depends on knowing a great deal, and that thoroughly; and that he has not made that discovery is not the fault of the teachers, but of the detestable system of training them ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... and beautiful prancing chargers; and the restaurant of the inn (which has the luck to face the pink and grey palace) swarmed with khaki tea-drinkers turning indifferent shoulders to the widest view in Europe. It is one of the most detestable things about war that everything connected with it, except the death and ruin that result, is such a heightening of life, so visually stimulating and absorbing. "It was gay and terrible," is the phrase ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... thought brought all circumambient ether to a boil. "Bah—destroy it!" "Detestable!" "Intolerable!" "If that is the best it can do, annihilate it!" "Far better brains have been destroyed for much less!" ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... nobody but his mother, who had little enough to say in the guidance of her boy. He set himself square like a pugilist, which was his notion of resistance. Mr. May looked on with a curious mixture of feelings. His own sudden and foolish hope was over, and what did it matter to him whether the detestable father or the coarse son should win? He turned away from them with contempt, which was made sharp by their utter uselessness to himself. Had it been possible that he might have what he wanted from Mr. Copperhead, his patience would have ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... of Holy Orders, or the presentation of any one to an ecclesiastical benefice for money, gift, or reward. Canon 40 calls it "the detestable sin of simony," and every person on being instituted to a benefice has to swear that he is not guilty of it. It is so called from the sin of Simon Magus (Acts viii. 19), though Paley states that the resemblance ...
— The Church Handy Dictionary • Anonymous
... had finished an endless amount of work, I was sent to sleep in the steerage, where I made up a spare bunk. I was glad to get out of the detestable presence of the cook and to be off my feet. To my surprise, my clothes had dried on me and there seemed no indications of catching cold, either from the last soaking or from the prolonged soaking from the foundering of the Martinez. Under ordinary circumstances, ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... several of the prisoners, whose good behavior or stupidity recommended them to the clemency of the government. He inquired how they were fed, and if they had any request to make. The universal response was, that the fare was detestable, and that they wanted ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... is the foible of the Irish people, and it is a remarkable fact, in spite of the detestable insult to their religious views which the law exacts from the Sovereign at his accession, that the popular welcome accorded to his Majesty, on the part of individuals, should remove any ground for the suggestion that the Crown, which Grattan always ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... to inflict severe penalties. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries several notorious procurers were burned alive at Paris. In the sixteenth century in cities of the south of France sometimes a woman of this detestable class was thrust into an iron cage and thrown into the river. When almost dead from drowning she was drawn out, and after a little the punishment was repeated. Many of the women who were burnt as witches were really condemned because they were ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... and know not how to claim a property either in their goods or children: and this general interest ties them more firmly together than if all their rags were twisted into ropes, to bind them indissolubly from a separation; which detestable union is farther ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... paltry hundred pounds. Paltry—no; to him it represented a huge and unattainable fortune; there wasn't a soul from whom he could borrow; not from the Tebbs, nor the Tremenheeres, and his associates at "Malahide" were, with one detestable exception, as poor as himself. After long meditation, entirely barren of inspiration, he went down to the Strand and lunched at Slater's, and then took the Tube to Bayswater Public Library, where he got hold of some books on Burma—Burma, ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... safety. Eretria, however, withstood a siege of six days; on the seventh the city was betrayed to the barbarians by two of that fatal oligarchical party, who in every Grecian city seem to have considered no enemy so detestable as the majority of their own citizens; the place was pillaged—the temples burnt—the inhabitants enslaved. Here the Persians rested for a few days ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... very kind in you. But, thank heaven! it is all over now, and I hope we shall soon bear you away from this place, that no doubt has become so detestable in your eyes that you never want ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... sir, in that you go too far! You know yourself how much Schwarzenberg is hated in all your territories, how ardently all patriots long for his deposition from the government; for the league with the Emperor is detestable to everybody, and fear of Catholic domination and desire for the Swedish alliance prevail ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... inordinate Love of Money. Your News Papers are silent upon every Subject of Importance but the Description of a Feast, or the Eclat of some Great Man. Your able Patriot is wholly employd in spirited Exertions of the Military Kind, or surely he wd have pourd forth all his Eloquence against so detestable a Motion.—" The Motion did not obtain." I rejoyce in this; But Do you do Justice [to] the House by so faint an Expression? I hope they rejected it with every Mark of Contempt & Indignation. Do the Gentlemen who made & supported this Motion know, that even in this Quaker ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... glee; they were not in the direction in which he wished for the present really to move. There were moments when he felt almost angry, though of course he held his tongue, when by the few persons who saw them they were pronounced wonderfully clever. That they were wonderfully clever was just the detestable thing in them, so active had that cleverness been in making them seem better than they were. There were people to whom he would have been ashamed to show them, and these were the people whom it would give ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... with thee as thou hast done, which hast despised the oath in breaking the covenant."[674] He had been commanded to utter the corresponding denunciation, "But as for them whose heart walketh after the heart of their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their way upon their own heads, saith the Lord God."[675] But he had also been charged with the promise, "I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham
... blowing for 'Stations,' the rattle of arms as the Indian ship's-guard fell in. These all affected me with strange twinges of futile protest. Surely there was a time for all things, and this was the time for coffee and tobacco, not for disconcerting risks and detestable noises. I wanted never to hear our four-inch gun again by day. The idea of its shaking the peace of night to bits was preposterous. Yet a light was reported ahead, a moving light on the lake itself. ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... one star'd! "what detestable stories!" The PARROT aloud cried, "O! tempora, O! mores!" But Phoebus advancing, now brought on the day, And the PEACOCK declar'd he must hasten away. His Companion directly Sir Argus obey'd, And both to the Countess some compliments ...
— The Peacock and Parrot, on their Tour to Discover the Author of "The Peacock At Home" • Unknown
... could get a tutor, and if it is necessary I'll do it. But I did not know but that you might be able to make a suggestion to me. I know I'm not very well prepared, but if you'll give me a show and tell me a little how to go to work at the detestable stuff I'll do my best. I don't like it. I wouldn't keep at it a minute if my father was not so anxious for me to keep it up and I'd do anything in the world for him. That's why ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... of the plot against the peace of the world and the failure to disclose to the German people the diplomatic communications hereinbefore quoted, strongly suggest that this detestable war is not merely a crime against civilization, but also against the deceived and misled German people. They have a vision and are essentially progressive and peace-loving in their national characteristics, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... returned to them. They had defied the king. What would he do? To protect themselves they added to the burden of their offences, summoning to their aid Thomas de Marle, the son of Lord Enguerraud de Coucy, a man who was little better than a brigand, and with a detestable ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... profess to understand. I belong to another school to you. My set detests the prosaic and commonplace; we must have the clever and original. Platitudes are detestable to us, unless they come clothed in a brilliant metaphor. Homely virtues I neither pretend to understand or admire. I much prefer eccentricity, ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... The paper has been going downhill for the last year; I know of two publishing houses who have withdrawn their advertising from it, and who never send their books for review. Everyone foresaw that kind of thing from the day Mr Fadge became editor. The tone of his paragraphs has been detestable. Two reviews of the same novel, eh? ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... to the hard necessity of using this spoilt grain." At Villeneuve-le-Roi, writes the mayor, "the rye of the two lots last sent is so black and poor that it cannot be retailed without wheat." At Sens the barley "tastes musty" to such an extent that buyers of it throw the detestable bread, which it makes in the face of the sub-delegate. At Chevreuse the barley has sprouted and smells bad; the "poor wretches," says an employee, "must be hard pressed with hunger to put up with it." At Fontainebleau ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... I have capacity to understand that it would be impossible to use those hideous—frightful instruments, on the bad hill-roads of this island. No; but it seems to be the nature of this dis-disagreeable—I had almost said detestable—youth, to move only under violent impulse, for he came round a corner of the Eagle Cliff at such a pace that, as I have said, he all but ran into my arms ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... into fine dresses, and a few weeks' stay at some very select watering-place in the North. If your wife be very accomplished, (like ours,) and your daughters much admired for their beauty, (like ours,) they will do as ours did-put wisely the cash got for their detestable relatives into a journey of inspection over Europe. So, you see, we keep our fashionable side of King street; and woe be to the shady mortal that ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... ready to be blown again; iridescent as ever, which is pleasant, for the world likes cheerful Mr. Barnum's success; New Haven, girt with flat marshes that look like monstrous billiard-tables, with hay-cocks lying about for balls,—romantic with West Rock and its legends,—cursed with a detestable depot, whose niggardly arrangements crowd the track so murderously close to the wall that the peine forte et dare must be the frequent penalty of an innocent walk on its platform,—with its neat carriages, ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... The barber pausing with the razor in his hand, the young gentleman asked him, angrily, why he did not begin. "I am waiting," replied the barber, "for your beard to grow." Specimens of writing were handed round, which were good; drawings, which, strange to say, were detestable. I praised the recitations and dialogues to the gentleman who sat next me. "Ah! oui," was his reply, "tout cela vient de Paris." So complete is the centralization of French intellect, even in such little matters as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... justice; that IS the virtue I affect," said Robespierre, meekly; and with his feline propensities he enjoyed, even in that critical hour of vast schemes, of imminent danger, of meditated revenge, the pleasure of playing with a solitary victim. (The most detestable anecdote of this peculiar hypocrisy in Robespierre is that in which he is recorded to have tenderly pressed the hand of his old school-friend, Camille Desmoulins, the day that he signed the warrant for his arrest.) "And my justice shall no longer be blind to thy services, good Nicot. Thou ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... for saying so. And, above all others, we should protect and hold sacred those types, Nature's masterpieces, which are first singled out for destruction on account of their size, or splendour, or rarity, and that false detestable glory which is accorded to their most successful slayers. In ancient times the spirit of life shone brightest in these; and when others that shared the earth with them were taken by death they were left, being more worthy of perpetuation. Like immortal flowers they ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... prisoner was saying, as Stanford Beale came noiselessly into the room, "it seems that under this detestable system of police espionage, a fellow may not even take a walk in the cool of ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... should be comparable to a poor creature like Letty. The fact, however, remained that Godfrey was a little altered toward her: she must have been telling him something against her— something she had heard from that detestable little hypocrite who was turned away on suspicion of theft! Yes—that was how Sepia talked to herself ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... "She's a detestable young woman," Lady Sarah said to her mother, "and I can only hope that Mary won't see much ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... Eugenius. Detestable rites! without our authority. I venture to affirm that, in the whole of Italy and Spain, no convent of monks or nuns contains a bath; and that the worst inmate of either would shudder at the idea of observing such a practice in common with the unbeliever. For the washing of the ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... detail. It is profoundly saddening to think that such abominations are committed; it is still more saddening to think that they are performed as a part of divine worship. Conscience, however, is so far alive that these detestable rites are practiced only in secret, and few, if any, are willing to confess that they have ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... emerged into a yard with a detestable pavement of broken bricks and mud, with high, towering houses surmounting it all around, and a number of broken outhouses and privies covering a large portion of the ground surface of the yard. Turning around, we could see the back of the tenement house from whose entry we had just ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... rescuing the national character from infamy without having something to do with Slavery at the South. The question with us was, whether we would allow the whole force of the National Government to be employed in upholding, extending, and perpetuating this detestable and nonsensical enormity?—especially, whether we would be guilty of that last and foulest atheism to free principles, the deliberate planting of slave institutions on virgin soil? If this question had been put to any despot of Europe,—we had almost said, to any despot of Asia,—his answer would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... ambitions for me. They sent me to a boarding school while I was very young. No one knows what a boy may suffer at school through the mere fact of separation, of isolation. This monotonous life without affection is good for some, and detestable for others. Young people are often more sensitive than one supposes, and by shutting them up thus too soon, far from those they love, we may develop to an exaggerated extent a sensitiveness which is overwrought and ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and was more amazed than when I had caught sight of Capito. Approaching me, but a few paces from me, was one of the most detestable bores in Rome, a man whom I sedulously avoided, Faltonius Bambilio. His father, the Pontifex of Vesta, was an offensively and absurdly unctuous and pompous man. His son, who had already held several minor offices in the City Government, had been one of the quaestors ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... 'gainst the stream of virtue they may strive, And drown themselves in riot! itches, blains, Sow all the Athenian blossoms; and their crop Be general leprosy! Breath infect breath; That their society, as their friendship, may Be merely poison! Nothing I'll bear from thee, But nakedness, thou detestable town! ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... you laugh at that detestable old woman?" he exclaimed on encountering Bertha later in the evening. "I wonder that M. Villefort would permit her to talk to you. She is a wicked, cynical creature, who has the hardihood to laugh at her sins instead ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... over the sanitary arrangements, and he condemned these unequivocally. The stench rising from the open latrines which swept over the field was indescribable. Dr. Ascher flew into a fierce temper over the shortcomings and detestable arrangements, which he maintained to be a serious menace to the health of the camp. We strove desperately to escape the horrible effluvium, but it could not be avoided unless we buried our heads. Dr. Ascher, by taking up a firm stand, had his way on this occasion, although the nature ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... England the most detestable advice given to young persons by eminent physicians, in consequence of this contracted view of man and his destinies. God forbid that I should measure the professional habits of Catholics by the rules of practice of those who were not! but it is plain that what is actually carried out where ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... Detestable old woman! Whither should he take himself? In what furthest part of the Rocky Mountains should he spend the coming autumn? If neither Mr. nor Mrs. Green called upon him for an explanation, what possible right could this abominable old harpy have to prey upon him? Just at ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... itself undertaking to see to their observance. It is quite possible that strong religious profession, and even sincere profession, might be accompanied, as it was in the Spaniards, with everything most detestable. It is not sufficient of itself to prove that their actions would correspond with it, but it is one among a number of evidences; and, coming, as they come before us, with hands clear of any blood but of fair and open enemies, their articles may ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... object. He is saying everywhere, 'Orange is a born ecclesiastic. Orange is a mystic. Orange is under the influence of Newman. Orange begins to see that marriage is not for him.' Such remarks don't help outside the Church. Really, competition renders the nicest people detestable." ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... a veil is drawn over others still more detestable. They are related circumstantially by Las Casas, who was an eye-witness. He was young at the time, but records them in his advanced years. "All these things," says the venerable Bishop, "and others revolting ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... representative of her good City of London struggled in an agony with one boot on and one off. At last he became beside himself, and cried wildly, "For God's sake put that boot on again." He only got it on in time to make his obeisance to her Majesty. He had to wear the detestable boots till the banquet; just before it, he was successfully ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... ought to have represented a great prince, that had inserved to some most detestable villany, to please the rage, or lust, of ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... the present with the past her bitterness becomes extreme. 'J'ai eu autrefois,' she writes in 1778, 'des plaisirs indicibles aux operas de Quinault et de Lulli, et au jeu de Thevenart et de la Lemaur. Pour aujourd'hui, tout me parait detestable: acteurs, auteurs, musiciens, beaux esprits, philosophes, tout est de mauvais gout, tout est affreux, affreux.' That great movement towards intellectual and political emancipation which centred in the 'Encyclopaedia' and the Philosophes ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... cannot say it. And it was not indeed 'doubt' of you—oh no—that made me write as I did write; it was rather because I felt you to be surely noblest, ... and therefore fitly dearest, ... that it seemed to me detestable and intolerable to leave you on this road where the mud must splash up against you, and never cry 'gare.' Yet I was quite enough unhappy yesterday, and before yesterday ... I will confess to-day, ... ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... I haue written at large before in the beginning of this worke, out of her owne Examinations and other Records, now remayning with the Clarke of the Crowne at Lancaster: And by her Mother brought vp in this detestable course of life; wherein I pray you obserue but the manner and course of it in order, euen to the last period at her Execution, for this horrible fact, able to terrifie and astonish ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... is a worse failure than my first, for I did pity poor Joe, but this man is detestable, and I never will forgive him that last insult. I dare say I was absurdly tragical, I'm apt to be when very angry, but what a temper he has got! The white, cold kind, that smoulders and stabs, instead of blazing up and being over in a minute. Thank Heaven, ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... I was delighted to be able to be again upon the move, and leave this detestable poisonous place and our fifteen-foot shaft behind. Our only regret was that we had been compelled to remain so long. The camels had nearly all been poisoned, some very much worse than others; but all looked gaunt and hollow-eyed, and were exceedingly weak and wretched, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... features, shades of expression, a complicated aspect that could be remembered by the eye, and something else besides, something invisible, a directing spirit of perdition that dwelt within, like a malevolent soul in a detestable body. He was anxious to make this clear. This had not been a common affair, everything in it had been of the utmost importance, and fortunately he remembered everything. He wanted to go on talking for ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... bad of blood will always be glad to mention one of the few good sides of a generally detestable character; and a person of humour must always chuckle at some of the ways in which Calvin's services to ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... you'd look at me, Jane," she said, "and leave off fiddling with those horrid, detestable feathers. When—when one is quite wretched, what do feathers matter? I have come home to ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... quite pretty when you are excited! Now, what did this wonderful Miss Peel do? Did she box the ears of those two detestable girls? If so, she ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... so much pleased our noble captain that he declared if he was ordered to rejoin the Channel fleet he would give up the frigate. After having refitted, to our great mortification we were again under orders for the detestable station off Brest. The captain wrote to be superseded, and as there was no lack of sharp half-pay skippers looking-out, his ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... never kept his word. A frequent source of grief to me has been to see objects of great value, illustrating some point in archaeology, seized as "curiosities" by ignorant wealthy folk. The most detestable form of this folly is the buying of incunabula, first editions or uncut copies, and keeping them from publication or reading, and, in short, of worshipping anything, be it a book or a coin, merely because it is rare. Men never expatiate on rariora in literature or in china, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... impudicus, Linn. (in Arab. Faswat el-'Ajz). The common "stinkhorn," extremely common in some districts of England, and obtruding on the notice of every one from its detestable odour. It is widely distributed over America and Africa, as well as Europe, but I find no record ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... feast which ever Timon made, and in it he took farewell of Athens and the society of men; for, after that, he betook himself to the woods, turning his back upon the hated city and upon all mankind, wishing the walls of that detestable city might sink, and the houses fall upon their owners, wishing all plagues which infest humanity—war, outrage, poverty, diseases—might fasten upon its inhabitants, praying the just gods to confound ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... my dear, be happy and brave." The next day he wrote again on the same subject: "I have yours of the 27th, with those of Hortense and M. Napoleon enclosed. I have asked you to go back to Paris; the season is too bad, the roads too insecure and detestable, the distance too great for me to allow you to come so far to me when my affairs detain me. It would take you at least a month to get here. You. would be sick when you got here, and then, perhaps, you would have to start back; it would ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... also very numerous. They were the coffee-houses of the ancient day. Hot drinks were sold there, boiled and perfumed wine, and all sorts of mixtures, which must have been detestable, but for which the ancients seem to have had a special fancy. "A thousand and a thousand times more respectable than the wine-shops of our day, these bathing-houses of ages gone by, where men did not assemble to shamefully squander their ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... preface "—The idea of the business which concerns Antonia, Henry and Gasper was presented to me in an obsolete Comedy; I say the idea, for when it is known that in the original the scene lay among traders in London—and those traders of the lowest and most detestable manners, it will be conceived at once, that in removing it to Portugal and fixing the characters among the nobility, it was hardly possible to carry with me more than the idea"—the traders whom Mrs. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... dreadful, how detestable!" Phyllis exclaimed. "How could any one be so wicked, and to Don above all people!" Chuck looked at her quickly. He expected to see tears in her eyes, but instead ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill
... abridged its power, that it was at last only able to rescue a man guilty of involuntary homicide[57]. We may hope, therefore, it was not altogether deserving the hard terms bestowed upon it by Millin[58] who calls it the most absurd, most infamous, and most detestable of all privileges, and adduces a very flagrant instance of injustice committed under its plea.—D'Alegre, governor of Gisors, in consequence of a private pique against the Baron du Hallot, lord of the neighboring town of Vernon, treacherously assassinated ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. I. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... to the eyes of the married couple but what was hideous and revolting. Ah! gentlemen, how is it possible that our minds should be in an ideal state, when instead of the music of angels flying here and there in the bosom of that heaven to which we have attained, our ears are assailed by the most detestable, the most angry, the most piercing of human cries and lamentations? We are perhaps indebted for the fine geniuses who have honored humanity to beds which are solidly constructed; and the turbulent population which caused the French Revolution were conceived perhaps ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... "and some of the others I have read a little of are detestable. I don't think you can be serious in advising me to ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... only too well represented the state of public feeling. All Middlesex—nay, all England—was roused to indignation, and poor Edmund's youth and infirmities made the crime appear the more cowardly and detestable. ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... truthfulness, the condition into which men may fall when their animal instincts and baser passions are allowed to subvert their reason and their noble qualities. The more a man suffers his better nature to yield to his lower, the more he resembles the detestable Yahoo. In this sense alone, the satire applies generally to mankind; but it applies with peculiar point to some characteristics of Swift's time. In reading the following passage, it is impossible not to be reminded of ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... permission to go beyond bounds if any cared to do so, and he hurried away, his intention being to call upon Dora Stanhope and see how she was faring. Although Dick would not admit it, he thought a great deal of Dora, and he was sorry, that she was in danger of having the detestable Josiah ...
— The Rover Boys at School • Arthur M. Winfield
... concluded that I had offended by squeezing Yoletta's hand, and had been told to read from the book merely to make myself acquainted with the pains and penalties attendant on such an indiscretion, for to call it a "detestable crime" seemed to me a very ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... second place in the kingdom, is a poor wretched village, the houses, always excepting the palace, are poorer than ordinary, abounding in rats, fleas, and other detestable vermin. Our reception would seem to be uncordial: we are miserably housed in the heart of the village, which is a beggarly one. On descending the hill some people in the Pillo's house behaved very insolently, roaring out, and making ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... it into his portfolio. He had no policy, and did not want another's. He had bottled his wasp. Seward was obedient as the spaniel. His powers were recognized by the villains who comprised him in the detestable plot. ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... surveying and such other employments as offered themselves, wrote poems to Helen Minorkey, and plotted and planned how he might break up little Katy's engagement. He plotted and planned sometimes with a breaking heart, for the more he saw of Smith Westcott, the more entirely detestable he seemed. But he did not get much co-operation from Isabel Marlay. If he resented any effort to make a match between him and "Cousin Isa," she resented it ten times more vehemently, and all the more that she, in her unselfishness of spirit, admired sincerely the unselfishness of Charlton, ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... Carr great. With nothing but his good looks and his personal charm, his only real attributes, Carr had been no more than King James's creature. James, with all the pedantry, the laboured cunning, the sleezy weaknesses of character that make him so detestable, was yet too shrewd to have put power in the hands of the mere minion that Carr would have been without the brain of Overbury to guide him. Of himself Carr was the 'toom tabard' of earlier parlance in his native country, the 'stuffed shirt' of a later and more remote generation. But beyond the ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... voices are not at least tolerable were rejected, as unfit to preach! Saadi seems to have had a great horror of braying orators, and relates a number of anecdotes about them, such as this: A preacher who had a detestable voice, but thought he had a very sweet one, bawled out to no purpose. You would say the croaking of the crow in the desert was the burden of his song, and that this verse of the Kuran was intended for him, "Verily the most detestable of sounds is the ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... not like to make insinuations, but I do think the above statistics darkly suggest that these people over here drink this detestable water "on the sly." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... stand upon things, and not shows of things. According as he loves, and venerates, articulately or with deep speechless thought, the awful realities of things, so will the hollow shows of things, however regular, decorous, accredited by Koreishes or Conclaves, be intolerable and detestable to him. Protestantism too is the work of a Prophet: the prophet-work of that sixteenth century. The first stroke of honest demolition to an ancient thing grown false and idolatrous; preparatory afar off to a new thing, which shall be true, ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Yesterday Madame Loupins came to me and asked for the eleven francs we owe here; and told me plainly that if within three days we did not settle our account, she would turn us out; and I know enough of her to be sure that she will keep her word. The detestable old hag would do anything for the pleasure of seeing me on ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... of revenge. A dozen ideas struck him, but none seemed good enough. Finally, he thought of one, which, if carried out, would completely crush his detestable rival. ...
— The Silver Lining - A Guernsey Story • John Roussel
... sweet Phaedime. Well, for the present we must be patient and wait our time. That detestable hypocrite Croesus seems to have established himself as protector of the Egyptian; when he is away, we ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... impartiality and its seriousness. Of course it was not able to enforce its ruling thoroughly. Plays which were merely lightminded and irresponsible in their viciousness were repeatedly mentioned by Mr Harcourt and others. But the really detestable plays, which would have damned the censorship beyond all apology or salvation, were never referred to; and the moment Mr Harcourt or anyone else made the Committee uncomfortable by a move in their direction, the ruling was appealed to at ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... perish. This the devil beheld, and, in futile emulation, striving to outdo the work of the High Ones, he imitated their creation, and produced the water-buffalo! Every one who knows this brute, must admit that the Indian theory bears on its face the imprint of truth; for a more detestable beast of the field does not exist, and it would be difficult, for any one less skilled in evil than His Satanic Majesty, to have conceived the idea of so diabolical an animal. In the Malay Peninsula, its principal functions would appear to be stamping bridle-paths ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... stupor Madame de Meilhan showed no indignation at my presence; but no sooner had she recovered the use of her senses than she burst into a storm of abuse; calling me a detestable intriguer, a low adventuress who, by my stage tricks, had turned the head of her noble son; I would be the cause of his death—that fatal country would never give back her son; what a pity to see so ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... misrule and abuse of language serves a detestable purpose that is only too evident. A charge like the above is true and false, that is to say, it is neither true nor false; it says nothing, unless explained, or unless you make it say what you wish. It is a sure, safe, but cowardly way ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... continuing "his greatest enemie." In the year 1597, he published in Edinburgh his famous treatise on Demonology. Its design may be gathered from the following passage in the introduction: "The fearful abounding," says the king, "at this time and in this country of these detestable slaves of the devil, the witches or enchanters, hath moved me, beloved reader, to despatch in post this following treatise of mine, not in any wise, as I protest, to serve for a show of mine own learning and ingene [ingenuity], but only (moved of conscience) to press thereby, so ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... steps. The wretch managed to creep up to me again under another form, and as I was on one occasion taking the fresh air in my garden, clad as a slave, he presented me a potion which changed me into this detestable figure. He brought me hither, swooning through fear, and exclaimed in my ear with awful voice, 'There shalt thou remain, frightful one, despised even by beasts, until thy death, or till one, of his own free will, even under this execrable form, take thee to wife. ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... their axles. The carriage conveying Talleyrand was a whole night stuck fast, in spite of the efforts of ten horses to drag it out. The opinion of the soldiery on Poland and the Poles is well expressed by that prince of raconteurs, Marbot: "Weather frightful, victuals very scarce, no wine, beer detestable, water muddy, no bread, lodgings shared with cows and pigs. 'And they call this their country,' said ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... letters, and other infamous pieces and scurrilous pamphlets, circulating with unusual industry throughout the kingdom, by the enemies of Britain, thereby poisoning the minds of our liege subjects with their detestable tenets?—And did you not this day see the procession, and that vile miscreant Lord Patriot at their head, going to St. James's with their remonstrance, in such state and parade as manifestly tended to provoke, challenge and defy majesty ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... Mr. Ireland, not pretend to decide: but were a child, in whom I had any interest, cursed with such a propensity, my first object would be to correct it: if that were impracticable, and he retained a fondness for the cockpit, and the still more detestable amusement of Shrove Tuesday, I should hardly dare to flatter myself that he could become a merciful man.—The subject has carried me farther than I intended: I will, however, take the freedom of proposing ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... the effects of our national curse. They are not riotous; they are only dull, coarse, and silly. Their talk is confused, dogmatic, and generally senseless; and, when they break out into downright foulness of speech, their comparatively silent enjoyment of detestable stories is a thing to make one shiver. Here again good-fellowship is absent. Comfortable tradesmen, prosperous dealers, sharp men who hold good commercial situations, meet to gossip and exchange dubious stories. They laugh a good deal ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... grumbled Prieme. 'In the heat of battle I struck too hard at a Swede, just on the edge of this abominable ditch, and then my foot slipped and down I came into it myself, and the detestable thing's so deep there is no getting out again. Perhaps, with your help, I ...
— The Young Carpenters of Freiberg - A Tale of the Thirty Years' War • Anonymous
... simple. If these men knew him as he was—knew of his interest in them, of his willingness to be fair—he would have had their confidence from the start. His father had made him appear a tyrant, without consideration for labor; had made him a capitalist of the most detestable type. It was a deep-seated impression. It had been proven. The men had experienced it; had felt the weight of Bonbright's ruthless hand.... How could he make them believe it was not his hand? How could he make them believe that the measures taken to crush the strike ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... the Parliament in full assembly that the King having just expired by the act of a most cruel, most inhuman, and most detestable regicide committed upon his sacred person, it became necessary to provide for the safety of the reigning monarch and of his kingdom, required that an order should be promptly issued concerning his safety and that of the state, which could only be ruled and governed by the Queen during ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... simple and shorter, we could wish that they had reached us without details which awake all sorts of suspicions,[8] but it is very seldom that a witness does not try to prove his affirmations and to prop them up by arguments which, though detestable, are appropriate to the vulgar audience ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... order that the fire might purify at one and the same time, the infection of the body and that of the soul, giving as an ostensible reason for his fiendish barbarity, the absurd and baseless allegation, that the Lepers had been bribed to commit the detestable sin and horrible crime of poisoning the wells, waters, etc., used by the Christians. The real cause being a desire, through this flimsy excuse, to rob the richer hospitals of their funds and possessions, this is clearly manifest ...
— The Leper in England: with some account of English lazar-houses • Robert Charles Hope
... broccoli or cabbage in his plate, as if it had been the substantial wing of a chicken. In a few minutes Shelley opened the conversation by saying in the most feminine and gentle voice, "As to that detestable religion, the Christian—" I looked astounded, but casting a glance round the table, I easily saw that I was to be set at that evening vi et armis.... I felt like a stag at bay, and resolved to gore without ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Street, anyway," said Bones, annoyed. "It is a detestable street, a naughty old street, and I should ride up it—or, at least, I shall in a day ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... hand. Think, for instance, of the little children who have been pursued and tormented and butchered in the Congo Free State during the last year or so, hands and feet chopped off, little bodies torn and thrown aside that rubber might be cheap, the tyres of our cars run smoothly, and that detestable product of political expediency, the King of the Belgians, have his pleasures. Think too of the fear and violence, the dirt and stress of the lives of the children who grow up amidst the lawless internal strife of the Russian political chaos. Think of the emigrant ships even now rolling upon ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... practice of high antiquity, like many other detestable and abominable things that still cling to our social fabric. It was much in vogue in Greece and the adjacent isles. There was an annual festival at Athens called 'The Cock-fighting,' instituted by Themistocles at the end of the Persian ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... year the queen gave birth to a princess, which innocent babe underwent the same fate as the princes her brothers; for the two sisters, being determined not to desist from their detestable schemes till they had seen the queen their younger sister at least cast off, turned out, and humbled, exposed this infant also on the canal. But the princess, as had been the two princes her brothers, preserved from death by the compassion and charity ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Anonymous
... noticed all this, and spoke to Talbot about it in distress. Talbot merely said, "Perhaps it's her health; you'd better ask her." Stephen did so, and found there was a reason for her apparent illness, which delighted and consoled him; but when Katrine flew into a passion, declared it was detestable, that it would take away her freedom and her power to ride and enjoy herself, Stephen was shocked and grieved, and said he was disappointed in her; whereupon Katrine replied she hated him, and Stephen quoted scripture texts to her till she ran out of the ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross |
