"Repulsive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shows his character and nature, the editor thinks it proper to disclose the fact that Mr. Hawthorne was himself the gentleman of that party who took up in his arms the little child, so fearfully repulsive in its condition. And it seems better to quote his own words in reference to it, than merely to say ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... have told her; he was nowhere near an understanding of himself. The more he was educated, the less he understood. Slavery struck him in the face; it was a nightmare; a horror; a crime; the sum of all wickedness! Contact made it only more repulsive. He wanted to escape, like the negroes, to free soil. Slave States were dirty, unkempt, poverty-stricken, ignorant, vicious! He had not a thought but repulsion for it; and yet the picture had another side. The May sunshine and shadow had something to do with it; the thickness of foliage and ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... snake is remarkable for its vivid yellow, crossed by a black longitudinal pupil. The colour of the body is a mixture of dull hues, and the abdomen pinkish; the head broad, thick, flattened, and its 'tout ensemble' hideously repulsive. But I am digressing, and leaving poor Cato ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... the rules of good behaviour might be familiar, but who, either from pride or misanthropy, scorned to observe them. Still I thought of him with interest and curiosity, notwithstanding so much about him that was repulsive; and I promised myself, in the course of my conversation with the Quaker, to learn all that he knew on the subject. He turned the conversation, however, into a different channel, and inquired into my own condition of life, and views ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... possess (1304.)? Then again, when current or discharge occurs between two bodies, previously under inductrical relations to each other, the lines of inductive force will weaken and fade away, and, as their lateral repulsive tension diminishes, will contract and ultimately disappear in the line of discharge. May not this be an effect identical with the attractions of similar currents? i.e. may not the passage of static electricity into current electricity, and that of the lateral tension of the ...
— Experimental Researches in Electricity, Volume 1 • Michael Faraday
... thorough specimen of the leery London mongrel. That hideous leer is so repulsive—one cannot endure it—but it is so common; you see it on the faces of four-fifths of the ceaseless stream that runs out from the ends of the earth of London into the green sea of the country. It disfigures the faces of the carters who go with the waggons and other vehicles—not nomads, but ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... huge head, about fifty centimetres long, which was bearded and had a large snout, was cut off with part of the neck and carried to one of the camps, with a piece of the liver, which is considered the best part. I had declined it, as the meat of the wild pig is very poor and to my taste repulsive; this old male being also unusually tough, the soldiers complained. The following morning I saw the head and jaws almost entirely untouched, too ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... literally paralyzed, and there was nothing for the boatman to do but pull in on the float, disengage his animated fishhook by a dextrous pressure on the sucker after both had been drawn aboard, and send the repulsive looking servant ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... seemed to him frivolity in the religions pomp that he saw. But here was a religion not only without the attractions of sensuous surrounding, but a religion that maintained its vitality despite a repelling plainness, not to say a repulsive ugliness, in its external forms. For could he doubt the force of a religious principle that had divested every woman in the little church of every ornament? Doubtless he felt the narrowness that could read the scriptural injunction ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... something which should occupy every moment, and all her powers and thoughts, was her only hope of contentment. What it might be, what it ought to be, she had not conceived. Was it not offered now? Horrible, repulsive, degrading—yes, but was it not so much the worthier? Here stood the man she had loved in all the prime and power of his youth, full of hope, and beauty, and vigor—the hero that satisfied the girl's longing—and he was bent, gray, wan, shaking, utterly ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... an inestimable solace to him. To extremely devout persons, there is something objectionable in most of the great writers of antiquity. Horace, Lucretius, Terence, Catullus, Juvenal,—in each there is one quality or another definitely repulsive to a reader who is determined to know nothing but Christ and him crucified. From time immemorial, however, it has been recognized in the Christian church that this objection does not apply to Virgil. He is the most evangelical of the classics; he ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... lone scenes, be it even by the cursed waters of Judea, or afflicted lands of Assyria,—give me, I say, death in any one of them, with the good sun and a bright heaven to whisper hope, rather than the solitary horrors of such scenes as these. The very wind scorned courtesy to such a repulsive landscape, and as the stones rattled down the slope of a ravine before the blast, it only recalled dead men's bones, and motion in a catacomb. A truce, however, to such thoughts—May's merry recognition breaks the stillness of the frosty air. ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... her. "Read me aloud what my son says," said she. Then Gwen understood what Granny Marrable had meant when she said that, of the two, her sister had understood it the better. For as she uttered the letter's repulsive expressions, reluctantly enough, a side-glance showed her old Maisie's listening face and closed eyes, nowise disturbed at her son's rather telling description of his hunted life. At the reference to ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... fell upon him the great temptation that was to torment him for many days. In the presence of these powerful and repulsive men, who were the princes of anarchy, he had almost forgotten the frail and fanciful figure of the poet Gregory, the mere aesthete of anarchism. He even thought of him now with an old kindness, as if they had played together when children. But he remembered that he was still tied to Gregory ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... were not only imperfect, but often irreconcilable with the sound dictates of reason and morality, as they respect intercourse with those around us; and repulsive and anti-social, as respecting other nations. They needed reformation, therefore, in ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... involves the others of taking care that we have goodness to show, and that we do not make our goodness repulsive by our additions to it. There are good people who comfort themselves when men dislike them, or scoff at them, by thinking that their religion is the cause, when it is only their own roughness and harshness of character. It is not enough ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... often told these planters that I thought the word "slave" was the most repulsive part of the institution, and I have always observed they invariably shirk using it themselves. They speak of their servant, their boy, or their negroes, but never of their slaves. They address a negro as boy or girl, ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... her husband was in the room, speaking to the chairman of the county court, and claiming a certificate in the sum of two dollars each for the scalps of one wolf, "an' one painter," he continued, laying the small furry repulsive objects upon the desk, "an' one dollar fur the skelp of one wild-cat." He was ready to take his oath that these animals were killed by him running at large ...
— His "Day In Court" - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... of barely twenty, Levasseur had sailed with that monster of cruelty L'Ollonais, and his own subsequent exploits bore witness and did credit to the school in which he had been reared. I doubt if in his day there was a greater scoundrel among the Brethren of the Coast than this Levasseur. And yet, repulsive though he found him, Captain Blood could not deny that the fellow's proposals displayed boldness, imagination, and resource, and he was forced to admit that jointly they could undertake operations of a greater magnitude than was possible singly to either of them. The climax of Levasseur's project ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... vindicated, there being little doubt that Shakespeare intended the simulated madness of the latter through his intellectual supremacy to be equally true to nature, the manners of his age permitting the delineation in a form which is now repulsive ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... virtuous Toinon turned her red and swollen eyes to a miserable photograph hanging against the wall. This blotchy smudge portrayed an exceedingly ugly, dissipated-looking young man, afflicted with a terrible squint, and whose repulsive mouth was partially concealed by a faint mustache. This rake of the barrieres was Polyte Chupin. And yet despite his unprepossessing aspect there was no mistaking the fact that this unfortunate woman loved him—had always loved him; ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... unintelligible to the English reader, at least far from readable, while others deviate so entirely from the form of the original as to be no longer translations in the proper sense of the term. I have sought to pursue a middle course between a mere literal translation, which would be repulsive, and a loose paraphrase, which would be in the case of such a work peculiarly unsatisfactory. Those who are most conversant with the difficulties of such a task will probably be the most willing to show forbearance towards the shortcomings of my performance, ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... octopus flattening itself upon the sand as though to secure a greater purchase. The crab set both its claws into the soft flesh of the tentacles, whereupon, with a series of horrible convulsions, the cuttlefish lumbered entirely out of the sea and, with two or three repulsive and sinuous gyrations, it forced itself bodily over the crab. By this means the outstretched membranes at the base of the tentacles smothered the movements of the prey and prevented escape, while at the same time the mouth and biting beaks were brought into position ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... the rude in canoes—of rough slabs tied together and caulked with moss,—and rough bone- pointed spears, bows, arrows and paddles. Their only clothing consists of skins of the guanacos loosely hung from the neck, and flapping over the naked and repulsive body. They make no houses, and on shore their only shelters from the wind and snow and chilling rains are rabbit-like forms of brush, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... sister in a public stew is expected to be amiable to all sorts of bounders, thinks of how she would shrink from such contacts, and so concludes that the actual prostitute suffers acutely. What she overlooks is that these men, however gross and repulsive they may appear to her, are measurably superior to men of the prostitute's own class—say her father and brothers—and that communion with them, far from being disgusting, is often rather romantic. I well remember observing, during my collaboration with the vice-crusaders aforesaid, the ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... the Greeks were never able to bear, poisoned all his good qualities and exaggerated his bad ones. He did not fall into the luxury of his predecessors. He still wore the habit of a philosopher, and lived with simplicity, but he made public mistakes. His manners, always haughty, became repulsive. He despised popularity. He conferred no real liberty. He retained his dictatorial power. He preserved the fortifications of Ortygia. He did not meditate a permanent despotism, but meant to make himself king, with a modified constitution, like that of Sparta. He had no popular ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... speaks of a mountain, the top of which reached to the skies. Another says that a very dense column of smoke took people up. Another tells of a tree which, when it fell, was sixty miles in length. Another tree is mentioned which formed a sort of ladder, but on different sections of it there were repulsive or stinging insects, through which few but the very courageous persevered in forcing their way. First there was a part swarming with cockroaches; then a place full of ants; then a section covered with large venomous ants; beyond that again was a part of the tree ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... as he, on this day, came leaning on his staff and with considerable strain, as far as the street for a little relaxation, he suddenly caught sight, approaching from the off side, of a Taoist priest with a crippled foot; his maniac appearance so repulsive, his shoes of straw, his dress all in tatters, muttering several sentiments to ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... up refreshed, toward the middle of the next day, I instinctively returned to my first opinion. The appearance of the farmhouse presented itself to me under the same repulsive colors which the evening before had determined me to make my escape from it. Reason itself remained silent when reviewing all those coarse details, and was forced to recognize in them the indications of a low nature, or else the presence of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the ancient, undying plaint of youth, Miss Hugonin moved a matter of two inches to the left, and smiled, and waited contentedly. It was barely possible some one might come that way; and it is always a comfort to know that one is not exactly repulsive in appearance. ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... difference is in the language they speak. But that makes it still worse. The justification for cattle is that, they are without speech. But when the cattle become articulate, begin to speak, defend themselves and express ideas then the situation becomes intolerable, unmitigatedly repulsive. Their dwelling-places are different too—yes—but that's a small thing. I was in a city inhabited by a hundred thousand people. The windows in the house of that city are all small. Those living in them are all fond ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... the high development of the Caucasian race, it is repulsive to your sentiments to believe that man belongs to the animal kingdom as its highest link, and springs from this kingdom. Yet this feeling is false, and must be destroyed, since it originates only in self-conceit and it is not so very difficult to arrive at ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... of schools of theology, Dan had been brought suddenly in contact with actual conditions. In his experience of the past weeks there was no charm, no glory, no historical greatness, no theoretical perfection. There was meanness, shameful littleness—actual, repulsive, shocking. He was compelled to recognize the real need that his husks could not satisfy. It had been forced upon his attention by living arguments that refused to be put aside. And Big Dan was big enough ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... present to the people in the form worked out by the Neo-platonists. That was impossible at the time, and it is so even now with the great mass of Christians. On the other hand, the many subtleties and oddities which have made the later Neo-platonism so repulsive to us, hardly existed for the consciousness of the masses, which could only adopt the fundamental ideas of the Logos system with a great effort. Religion is not philosophy; but there has never been a religion, and there never can be, which is not based on philosophy, and does not ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... "the jimson weed on the Pacific coast, in some parts of the Andes, has large white flowers which exhale a faint, repulsive odour. It is a harmless-looking plant, with its thick tangle of leaves, a coarse green growth, with trumpet-shaped flowers. But to one who knows its properties it is quite too dangerously convenient ...
— The Gold of the Gods • Arthur B. Reeve
... wine-cup, stood before him in a singular plight, for he was completely drenched, and a disagreeable odour of liquor exhaled from him. The flaxen hair, which bristled around his head and hung over his broad, ugly face, gave him so unkempt and imbecile an appearance that it was repulsive to the almoner, and he harshly asked where ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... settled melancholy, and an utter disgust of all that life brings with it.' It is obvious that this description is largely coloured by passing depression. 'His features,' says one contemporary, 'were plain, but not repulsive,—certainly not so when lighted up by conversation.' Another witness—the 'Jessamy Bride'—declares that 'his benevolence was unquestionable, and his countenance bore every trace of it.' His true likeness would seem to lie midway between the grotesquely truthful ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... trouble, the real burden, the real tragedy and sorrow of our white population in those sections of the country where the Negroes are many,—that they are compelled to dwell face to face, day by day, with an inferior, degraded population, repulsive to their finer sensibilities, obnoxious to them in countless ways inexplicable? Facts are far from furnishing an affirmative answer. However pronounced may be the feeling of personal aversion toward ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... unexplained way—'I give for the life of the world.' And that there may be no misunderstanding, there is a third, deeper, more mysterious statement still: 'My flesh is meat indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.' Repulsive and paradoxical, but in its very offensiveness and paradox, proclaiming that it covers a mighty truth, and the truth, brother, is this, the one Food that gives life to will, affections, conscience, understanding, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... expresses certain states in the moral temper of the people by and for whom it is produced. It may surprise us to-day to know that when Ruskin wrote of the glories of Venetian architecture, the common "professional opinion was that St. Mark's and the Ducal Palace were as ugly and repulsive as they were contrary to rule and order." In a private letter Gibbon writes of the Square of St. Mark's as "a large square decorated with the worst architecture I ever saw." The architects of his own time regarded Ruskin's opinions as dictated by ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... return home that night, I lay down to sleep not only with a presentment that my idea would come to nothing, but with shame and a consciousness that all day long I had been engaged in a very repulsive and disgraceful business. But I did not give up this undertaking. In the first place, the matter had been begun, and false shame would have prevented my abandoning it; in the second place, not only the success of this scheme, but the very fact ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... its human part rallies against its inhuman, and all the kingly attributes of a freeborn individual rise up in final indignation against its slavish attributes, then commences the true and only war of a people, and the only war of which we dare say, though it have the repulsive features that belong to all wars, that it is religious. But that we do say; for it is to win and keep the unity of a country for the great purposes of mankind, a place where souls can have their chances to work, with the largest freedom and under the fewest disabilities, at the divine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... harassed spirit from the repose where earthly cares shall "cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest?" Yet how Marian loved and clung to her, and felt as if she could never bear to part, and lose the affection that had been so long kept off by her own repulsive demeanour, but that was so ardent and unreserved! How grievous to think of the blooming, life-like creature that she was so lately, now ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... more capable and useful. The pretty grown-up daughter here, leading her little sister by the hand, so gracious and modest in her mien, so sunny and affectionate, so obviously wholesome and high-principled—is she not a walking testimonial to the system? Yet to us the system is not the less repulsive in itself. Its results may be what you please, but its practice were impossible. We are too tender, too sentimental. We have not the nerve to do our duty to children, nor can we bear to think of any one else doing ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... virtues also, like the beauties of the body, can grow old, and become repulsive and hateful ...
— The Wedding Guest • T.S. Arthur
... mouth, lipless, but red like a curved gash with upturned corners to make the travesty of a grin; a triangle of watery eyes, goggling. Senselessly, it stood watching Elza with a dull, vacant curiosity. Not human, this thing! Yet monstrously repulsive in its hideous ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... better than herself—every word she had said, every one of those bitter words at which she had been so indignant the morning before, was true, was justified. That day Priscilla tore the last shreds of self-satisfaction from her soul and sat staring at it with horrified eyes as at a thing wholly repulsive, dangerous, blighting. What was to become of her, and of poor Fritzing, dragged down by her to an equal misery? About one o'clock she heard Mrs. Morrison's voice below, in altercation apparently with him. At this time she was crying again; bitter, burning tears; those ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... members of the Greek phratry, of the Roman fatria, or gens, of the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon guild, and of the mediaeval sworn commune, were all solemnly bound to avenge the blood of any of their brethren, unlawfully slain. So that the repulsive repetition of reprisals, which so disgusts the modern reader in our old annals, is by no means a phenomenon peculiar to the Irish state of society. It was in the middle age and in early times common to all Europe, to Britain and Germany, as well ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... over the hot coals; also collops, spitted, with bits of fat bacon between. But neither of us cared much for goat's meat, and Agathemer's attempt at a broth made of the tougher meat was not a success. It had a repulsive smell and a more repulsive taste, though it seemed nourishing. He made only one pot of broth. After that we fed the coarser parts, little by little, ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying upon itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things. There is nothing less poetical than this sort of unaccommodating selfishness. There is nothing more repulsive than this sort of ideal absorption of all the interests of others, of the good and ills of life, in the ruling passion and moody abstraction of a single mind, as if it would make itself the centre of the universe, ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... was repulsive, even to the charlatan himself. The latter gazed at him, and replied ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... valley; sometimes it was a distinguished Quaker from abroad, but oftener it was a peddler or some vagabond begging for food, which was seldom refused. Once a foreigner came and asked for lodgings for the night—a dark, repulsive man, whose appearance was so much against him that Mrs. Whittier was afraid to admit him. No sooner had she sent him away, however, than she repented. "What if a son of mine was in a strange land?" she thought. The young poet (who ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... think her really ugly? She does not strike me, as so very plain—there is nothing repulsive in her face. I have known girls called pretty, who had something far nearer coarseness in their features. It is true, I have been accustomed to see her from the time she was four years old; and, I know, she is always thought very plain ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... they are infinitely NASTIER than any thing else in the English language. They have, however, the negative virtue of being nowise licentious or demoralizing—or at least no more so than is inseparable from the choice of obscene and repulsive subjects. Nearly all his unobjectionable comic verses may ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... hardly could believe that the dashing young cavalier that confronted me in the mirror, was the brother Anselmo. "Is this a face," said I, communing with myself, "to be disfigured with a vile tonsure? are these limbs to be hid under the repulsive garment of a monk?" Again I surveyed myself, and it was with difficulty that I could tear myself away from contemplating my metamorphosis. I was indeed a butterfly. At last, I determined upon sallying forth. I locked up my monastic dress and descended ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... king-vultures. Those we had killed were full-grown, and were about the size of an ordinary goose. As I saw them perched on the branches, tearing away at huge masses of flesh, I must say that, notwithstanding their regal titles, they had a very repulsive appearance. Chumbo told me how, in despair of getting any supper, he had rushed in and attacked the vulture with which I had found him struggling. Happily, he had come ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... his whole appearance is extremely repulsive. He is a horribly ill-made little man, and is always absent-minded, which gives him a distracted air, as if he were really crazy. When it could be the least expected, too, he will fall over his own walking-stick. The folks in the palace were so much accustomed to this in the late King's ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... spring from the low couch where they had laid him when they carried him in, dusty and bloody, fearful and repulsive sight of maimed flesh and torn ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... features of their women which we see in no other aboriginal race in India. Like the gipsies of Europe they are noted for the symmetry of their limbs; but their offensive habits, dirty clothing and filthy professions give them a repulsive appearance, which is heightened by the reputation they have of kidnapping children and frequenting burial-grounds and places of cremation.... Familiar with the use of bows and arrows and great adepts in laying snares and traps, they are seldom without large supplies of game ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... king was too confirmed a joker to object to any one's laughing), and displayed a set of large, powerful, and very repulsive teeth. Moreover, he avowed his perfect willingness to swallow as much wine as desired. The monarch was pacified; and having drained another bumper with no very perceptible ill effect, Hop-Frog entered at once, and with spirit, into ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... sometimes at Madrid, and sometimes at Brussels in Flanders. His son Philip had been married to a Portuguese princess, but his wife had died, and thus Philip was a widower. Still, he was only twenty-seven years of age, but he was as stern, severe, and repulsive in his manners as Mary. His personal appearance, too, corresponded with his character. He was a very decided Catholic also, and in his natural ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... liquid—these molecules attract each other so strongly as to overcome the separating power of the solvent, and they unite to form crystals. Sugar is much more soluble at high than at low temperatures, the heat acting in this as in almost all cases as a repulsive force among the molecules. It is therefore necessary to maintain a high vacuum in order to boil at a low temperature, in boiling to grain. When the proper density is reached the crystals sometimes fail to appear, and a fresh portion of cold sirup is allowed to enter the pan. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... be glad to hear a few of them, my friend. You were good enough just now to call me young and beautiful. You are young too, and certainly not repulsive in appearance. You are gifted, you have led an interesting life—indeed, I cannot help laughing when I think how many reasons there are for my falling in love with you. But you are very reassuring, you tell me there is no danger. I am ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... were fresh. It was an accident that she had noticed it; she had not noticed the door-plates or the wire-blinds of other solicitors. She did not know Mr. Q. Karkeek by sight, nor even whether he was old or young, married or single, agreeable or repulsive. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... brooding. His pride and his desire to know more of that courier's message were fighting it out again in his mind, just as they fought it out in the courtyard below. Suddenly his glance fell on her, standing there, so sweet, so frail, and so disconsolate. For her sake he must do the thing, repulsive though it might be. ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... course, you would write. Yesterday we were both out of our senses with mingled pity and indignation at that dreadful stick of a Casaubon,—and think of poor Dorothea dashing like a warm, sunny wave against so cold and repulsive a rock! He is a little too dreadful for anything: there does not seem to be a drop of warm blood in him, and so, as it is his misfortune and not his fault, to be cold-blooded, one must not get angry with him. It ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... you tell me what is distressing you so," said he, chafing her cold hands in his. "Is this engagement so repulsive, so averse to your feelings, as to cause this appearance ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... Davy Hull will make a career?" asked Jane. She had heard from time to time as much as she cared to hear about the world of a generation before—of its bareness and discomfort, its primness, its repulsive piety, its ignorance of all that made life bright and attractive—how it quite overlooked this life in its agitation about the extremely problematic life to come. "I mean a career in ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... pieces. Liszt mentions it with particular distinction, and grows justly eloquent over it. I do not altogether understand Schumann's objection: "It is still more gloomy than the scherzo," he says, "and contains even much that is repulsive; in its place an adagio, perhaps in D flat, would have had an incomparably finer effect." Out of the dull, stupefied brooding, which is the fundamental mood of the first section, there rises once and again (bars 7 and 8, and 11 and 12) a pitiable wailing, and then an outburst of passionate ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... produce no fruit in them but sentimentality. Others are merely protestants; they are active in the moral sphere only by virtue of an inward rebellion against something greater and overshadowing, yet repulsive and alien. They are conscious truants from a foreign school ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... five or seven years, be able to take apart and put together a watch; but all through life he would be working up hill and seizing every excuse for leaving his work and idling away his time. Watchmaking is repulsive to him. ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... ground in Billy's estimation because of using the word little. If he had said "my boy," it would have been all right; "my man" would have been gratifying; but "my little man" was repulsive. A smart servant girl who chanced to see him on his way to the library also caused him much pain by whispering to her fellow something about a sweet innocent-faced darling, and he put on a savage ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... blushing fiery red, "guilty of loving you! Oh! Paullus! Paullus!" and between shame, and anger, and the repulsive shock that every pure and feminine mind experiences in hearing of a sister's frailty, she buried her face in her ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... rushed into the jail nothing could check their course. The deputies, tall broad-shouldered fellows, pushed back the threatening tide, always with good-natured protests,—words half bantering, half appealing, repulsive thrusts of the arms, rough but inflicting no hurt. So peaceful a minute before had been the Square, it was difficult to comprehend ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... is commonly called a water mole, but to scientific men it is known as the mullingong; it is placed in the same order with its neighbour, the spring-ant or echidra, also a native of Australia. Before leaving these cases, the visitor should pause to notice the Sloths, and particularly the repulsive aspect of the yellow-faced sloth of ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... winding from the Court House to the churchyard on the farther edge of the town was a mass of moving colour and a babel of sound. The women, ranging from ebony through all the various shades of copper and olive to that repulsive white where the dark blood seems to flow just beneath the skin, and bedecked in all the violence of blues and greens, reds and yellows, some in country costume, their heads covered with kerchiefs, ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... now, as I think of it, and yet somehow seems such a fine satisfying protest—a feeling that some day I would be seen waddling about the streets of Chicago, known to all the denizens of the under world as Drunken Mary! I saw myself fat and repulsive, begging nickels from the passers-by and perhaps strangled at the end by some passing hobo for the few nickels in my stocking. And am I essentially worse than you, or my lady, or anyone whom Society protects and honours? To me poet and pimp, ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... seemed something of timidity in the repulsive faces of the waiting creatures, this newcomer was of a different type. He opened flabby thin lips to give one sharp note of command. It was as sibilant as the hissing of a snake. The man with the weapon returned it ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... far from obliterating iniquity, imports into the world iniquities of its own. It changes to some degree the aspects of iniquity, but does not make them less. Further than that its effect is rather regularly to dress iniquity in a less repulsive and more attractive form, and in that way makes it more difficult to get rid of than before. There is no sin so insinuating as refined and elegant sin, and of that civilization is the expert patron ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... sighed heavily, and was off. His clothing was torn and dust-covered, his face was purple and bloated, and his hair was dusty and disordered. He was a repulsive sight. As Dannie straightened Jimmy's limbs he thought he heard a step. He lifted his head and ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and squatted in pairs along the bottom of the canoe, plying short broad-bladed paddles with which they seemed to be urging their craft at a pretty good pace through the water. A big, brawny, and most repulsive-looking savage, who was probably the captain of the craft, sat perched up in the stern, steering with a somewhat longer and broader-bladed paddle, and urging his crew to maintain their exertions by continually giving utterance to the most ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... no religion to give these instinctive worshippers. The scholarly English Church would appear to have become conscious of this, and is leaving the work of propagandism to vulgar and ignorant sects. There seems to be nothing offered the young Hindus graduated in the universities of India except a repulsive "Salvationism" on the one hand, and a cold Agnosticism on the other. I had conversed with a company of students at Madras, and found them hardly able to understand the interest with which I followed the processions of "idols" about the streets, such things being looked on by them much as a march ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... goes. Those that travel only by stage coach or sedan will probably be surprised learn of the carriage of this vessel; for we, on our little pile of mud, can only conceive of that to which we are accustomed. Our voyager was very familiar with the laws of gravity and with all the other attractive and repulsive forces. He utilized them so well that, whether with the help of a ray of sunlight or some comet, he jumped from globe to globe like a bird vaulting itself from branch to branch. He quickly spanned the Milky Way, ...
— Romans — Volume 3: Micromegas • Voltaire
... Changeling[156] and Women Beware Women. In poetry and diction they are almost worthy at times to rank with Shakespeare's plays; otherwise, in their sensationalism and unnaturalness they do violence to the moral sense and are repulsive to the modern reader. Two earlier plays, A Trick to catch the Old One, his best comedy, and A Fair Quarrel, his earliest tragedy, are less mature in thought and expression, but more readable, because they seem to express ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... aborigines of Australia. Civilization has driven them farther and farther north, for the Australian black-fellows cannot be tamed and trained—their nature is too wild and fierce to be kept within bounds except by fear and crushing. They are treacherous and savage, and most repulsive in appearance. Though spoken of as black, they are really chocolate-brown, but so covered with hair as to be ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... the richest man in Greenstream, wore—as was customary with him—a crumpled yellow shirt, open at his stringy throat, and innocent of tie; his trousers, one time lavender, had faded to a repulsive, colorless hue, and hung frayed about cheap, heavy shoes fastened by copper rivets. An ancient cutaway of broadcloth, spotted and greenish, with an incomplete mustering of buttons, drooped about his heavy, bowed shoulders; while a weather-beaten ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... inhuman butchery; their clothes and weapons were smeared and clotted with blood; some held human heads aloft on their bayonets; the lanterns which most of them carried, and swung to and fro as they marched, threw on their repulsive figures and savage Oriental faces, their white teeth, oblique eyes, and sallow countenances, a weird, wavering light, appropriate to their infernal aspect; they looked more like demons than like men. The foremost, who appeared ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... one thing that makes leviathan repulsive, his foul smell: which is so strong that if it penetrated thither, it would render ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... and repulsive about that first burst of sound. The ferns of the forest shivered, as if awakened from a sunny dream to face terrible calamities. The trees seemed to shake with a delicate fear of what was in store for them. The enemy's fire burst upon them ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... acrobatics to save as much of the plowshare as possible from God's immortal granite. It's all very pastoral to talk about milk fresh from the sweet-breathed cow, but for ten years I was lady's maid to two singularly repulsive cows—and in time they cloyed upon me. Whenever those Juno-eyed kine lowed for a drink of water, it was up to me to hustle out and serve them—and I never got a tip for my service. To this good day, Carl, the sight of a cow gives me ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... ghastly and repulsive legend for the following reasons: One might hastily conclude, from its resemblance to the old legend of the origin of the Merovingian family, that this idea of the woman with the horrible water spirit for a lover was of Canadian French origin. But ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... through the crucial tests of a generation, perhaps several generations. Lord Bacon says the first sight of any work really new and first-rate in beauty and originality always arouses something disagreeable and repulsive. Voltaire term'd the Shaksperean works "a huge dunghill"; Hamlet he described (to the Academy, whose members listen'd with approbation) as "the dream of a drunken savage, with a few flashes of beautiful thoughts." ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... was a little dried-up mummy of a man, the ugliness of whose countenance was, as it were, emphasized by a disagreeable leer which would ever and anon deepen into a broad grin; this man, with his dreary jokes and vapid small-talk, was equally repulsive to me. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... a repulsive glance towards the cabinet that the cavalier shrank back as though expecting some grisly spectre from its portals; yet, himself the subject of an extraordinary fascination, he could not ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... day, 'Hilda is to be my wife, and it is necessary that you should like her. You cannot have any good reason to the contrary, and yet you act as though she were positively repulsive to you.' ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... disfiguring themselves by inserting in the lower parts of their ears and in their under lips variously shaped pieces of wood ornaments called peleles, causing enormous protrusion of the under lip and a repulsive wide mouth, as shown in ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... behind her and misery all around. Arrived at the scene of her unnatural labors, she applies herself to them with an energy which despair alone could engender, and which ends in completely unsexing her. She becomes weatherbeaten, coarse and repulsive. Her hands are like knots of wood; she is covered with dirt; her bones have grown large; her step is ungainly; she speaks in husky tones; she swears, drinks and fights. Meanwhile the corn ripens. After gigantic efforts she succeeds in harvesting it. At best it would have repaid the seed but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... the king was not unwilling, because of the awe in which he held them; but Ariel would not agree to mate herself with either, though she once intimated that when she became older she might listen favorably to the suit of Waggaman, whose appearance and manner were less repulsive than those of ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... felt to have a value quite distinct from that which the expectation of fame may have in the present moment. Should this expectation be foolish and destined to prove false, it would have no value, and be indeed the more ludicrous and repulsive the more pleasure its dupe took in it, and the longer his illusion lasted. The heart is resolutely set on its object and despises its own phenomena, not reflecting that its emotions have first revealed that object's ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... fears I shall speak of and in no spirit of levity. It is too pathetic for pleasantry or jest. It is the fear that you will in some thoughtless moment, when the occasion is most ill-timed, utter some vulgar or profane word. These ugly, repulsive words or thoughts will cling with the greatest tenacity and defy every effort to eradicate them. They are of a nature entirely foreign to one's disposition and character; for the neurasthenic, with all his eccentricities, is usually refined ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... his own two thousand pounds he would have; and two or three hundred on the spot by way of instalment. And, with these hard views, he drew near to Hernshaw; but the nearer he got, the slower he went; for what at a distance had seemed tolerably easy began to get more and more difficult and repulsive. Moreover, his heart, which he thought he had steeled, began now to flutter a little, and somehow to shudder at the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... a sensible form, it would excite in our souls feelings of inexpressible love. Vice is ugly when once stripped of the delusive fascination of the passions; the vicious excesses of the lower nature are ugly and repulsive as soon as the intoxication is over. Error is ugly too; there are no beautiful errors but those which contain a larger portion of truth than the prosaic verities, which are nothing else than falsehoods put in a specious way. ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... was never accepted by the newcomer. "I couldn't mind her, she looked so ugly," said she in excuse; and probably the heavy, brown, dull complexion and large features were repulsive in themselves to the sensitive fancy of the creature of life and beauty. At any rate, they were jarring elephants, as said Eleanor, who was growing ambitious, and sometimes electrified the public with curious versions of the long words more ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... make me very ugly? I know that I have not a really good mouth, Guido, but do you think it is positively repulsive? ...
— The Jewel Merchants - A Comedy In One Act • James Branch Cabell
... of deity attached to them, seem to have been transferred to Him by the ignorant worshippers, till instead of one Yahweh—one Lord—unique in character and in power, there were as many as there had been Baalim, and they bore the same inferior and sometimes repulsive characters. We cannot exaggerate this division of the Godhead into countless ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... affection. Not only was the change of discipline under which I now lived advantageous, but the great freedom I enjoyed, and which would have been quite impossible in London, was delightful to me; while the wonderful, picturesque beauty of Edinburgh, contrasted with the repulsive dinginess and ugliness of my native city, was a constant source of ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... people heartily; estimating them apparently from considerations entirely irrespective of age, or sex, or personal appearance. Sometimes, the very person who was thought certain to attract her, proved to be absolutely repulsive to her—sometimes, people, who, in Mr. Blyth's opinion, were sure to be unwelcome visitors to Madonna, turned out, incomprehensibly, to be people whom she took a violent liking to directly. She always betrayed her pleasure or uneasiness in the society ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... are they horsemen, but rather are they horse-maimers and promoters of the worst form of cruelty to animals. Let anyone go to Rotten Row during the season, and satisfy himself as to the extent to which the fashion prevails, and the repulsive appearance which otherwise beautiful horses present. The astonishing and most saddening feature of the equestrian promenade is the presence of ladies riding mares which are almost tailless. Surely a plea might be entered here for the use of a fig-leaf to clothe the nude." I feel ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... together in a great pot over a fire out of doors. It took about six bushels of ashes and twenty-four pounds of grease to make a barrel of soap. The soft soap made by this process seemed like a clean jelly, and showed no trace of the repulsive grease that helped to form it. A hard soap also was made with the tallow of the bayberry, and was deemed especially desirable for toilet use. But little hard soap was purchased, even in ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... for the better, if not in the substance of Rameau's character, at least in his manners and social converse. He no longer exhibited that restless envy of rivals, which is the most repulsive symptom of vanity diseased. He pardoned Isaura her success; nay, he was even pleased at it. The nature of her work did not clash with his own kind of writing. It was so thoroughly woman like that one could not compare it to a man's. Moreover, that ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... superficially like a small bee; some harmless snakes are very like poisonous species; and Mr. Wallace maintained that the powerful "friar-birds" of the Far East are mimicked by the weak and timid orioles. When the model is unpalatable or repulsive or dangerous, and the mimic the reverse, the mimicry is called "Batesian" (after Mr. Bates), but there is another kind of mimicry called Muellerian (after Fritz Mueller) where the mimic is also unpalatable. The theory in this case is that the mimicry serves ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... duty won't be at all unpleasant," he said. "The obnoxious and repulsive things will begin to happen to you later. Maybe ...
— —And Devious the Line of Duty • Tom Godwin
... is genre again, and is as repulsive as the last example is charming. It is a drunken old woman, lean and wrinkled, seated on the ground and clasping her wine-jar between her knees, in a state of maudlin ecstasy. The head is modern, but another copy of the statue has the original head, which is of the same character ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell
... was entirely alone. He had dismissed his attendants, and now stood in the centre of the room, awaiting his daughter in gloomy silence. His cold, stern features had grown more repulsive than ever to the unhappy girl; his piercing eyes more revengeful; his thin, pale lips more cruel. He seemed to her a pitiless stranger, and she could not advance to meet him. Powerless and faint, she stood at the door; all her ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Polly, sitting on the edge of the meal-ark and dangling her large feet, went into a number of plaintive details, that were mostly unintelligible, sometimes repulsive, in ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and peculiar. All the light and graceful foliage of her character had been withered up by this red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh outline, which might have been repulsive, had she possessed friends or companions to be repelled by it. Even the attractiveness of her person had undergone a similar change. It might be partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... must show signs of repentance and submit to all kinds of humiliations, often to the total loss of all his worldly possessions. Personally, I know several young Brahmans, who, having brilliantly passed the university examinations in England, have had to submit to the most repulsive conditions of purification on their return home; these purifications consisting chiefly in shaving off half their moustaches and eyebrows, crawling in the dust round pagodas, clinging during long hours to the tail ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... of the ordinary exhibitions of childish folly—of a kind to be imitated; for it is far better in dealing with children, to allure them to what is right by agreeable pictures of it, than to attempt to drive them to it by repulsive delineations of ...
— Rollo in Society - A Guide for Youth • George S. Chappell
... stolen by pirates, and adopted by the king of Thessaly, in whose court he grows up. The fame of Sephestia's beauty reaches her father and her son, who, ignorant of the relationship in consequence of Sephestia's change of name, both set out to woo the celebrated shepherdess. The repulsive scene of the same woman being the object at once of the passion of her father and her son is ended by Damocles carrying off Sephestia to his own court, where he proposes to execute Maximus as his successful rival, and Sephestia for her obstinate refusal of his addresses. ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... hundred and fifty yards away, presenting a truly terrifying spectacle to the little band among the rocks. So far as Leonard could see, there was not a man among them who stood less than six feet in height, and they were broad in proportion—hugely made. In appearance they were neither handsome nor repulsive, but solemn-looking, large-eyed, thick-haired—between black and yellow in hue—and wearing an expression of dreadful calm, like the calm of an archaic statue. For the rest they seemed to be well disciplined, each company being under the command of a captain, ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... most sanguine expectations, half-a-dozen fine but grotesque-looking fish speedily rewarding his efforts. The idea of devouring them raw was rather repulsive, but as there was no possible means of cooking them, they had either to do that or go without breakfast; so, selecting the most tempting-looking, they cut it up, and, after making a wry face over the first ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... poor, helpless, misshapen Penelope. I understand perfectly well that you much prefer to look at young and pretty women, but my mind is set on this matter. You must do as I—shall we say, suggest?—and that without delay or—there will be consequences. Her poor body is not half so ugly or repulsive as your selfish soul, Felix Brand, and you know very well who is ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... better off by havin' one less scoundrel in it," and Ham scowled down on the face of Bill Ugger, ugly and repulsive even in death. "Now," and he turned quickly to Holt, "didn't you say that thar Mexican skunk, Pedro, had gone tew git th' rest ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... one of the few Northern men, who go to the South and throw aside their honest mode of obtaining a living and resort to trading in human beings. A more repulsive-looking person could scarcely be found in any community of bad looking men. Tall, lean and lank, with high cheek-bones, face much pitted with the small-pox, gray eyes with red eyebrows, and sandy whiskers, he indeed stood alone without mate or fellow in looks. Jennings prided himself ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... eggs is not understood nor appreciated by those outside the trade. Such ignorance is due to the fact that the shrunken is not so repulsive as the rotten or heated egg. But the inferiority of the shrunken egg is so well appreciated by the consumer that high class dealers find it impossible to use them without ruining their trade. The result is that shrunken eggs are constantly being sent into the cheaper channels, with the ...
— The Dollar Hen • Milo M. Hastings
... embarked for Zaila, one of the Abyssinian ports. He was now once more on African ground, and advanced into the country of the Berbers, that he might study the manners and customs of those dirty and repulsive tribes; he found their diet consisted wholly of fish and camels' flesh. But in the town of Makdasbu, there was an attempt at comfort and civilization, presenting a most agreeable contrast with ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... revolver." When we had crossed the river, reckless of getting wet to our waists in icy-cold water, F—— took the revolver from me and went first; but, after an instant's examination, he called out, "Dead as a door-nail! come and look at him." So I came, with great caution, and a more repulsive and disgusting sight cannot be imagined than the huge carcass of our victim already stiffening in death. The shot had been a fortunate one, for only an inch away from the hole the bullet had made his shoulders ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... and evidently suffering from severe influenza, looks the picture of shivering discomfort. Although in no better plight herself, Sally rejoices in the sufferings of her brother, and as she sips her tea, her repulsive features are distorted with a hideous grin of satisfaction. Quilp, seated on his barrel beneath the only remnants of a roof, occupies a comparatively dry corner, and looks the very picture ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... the woman's tone that went to the heart of the lonely boy, even while he recoiled from the repulsive creature before him. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... and moral decay. For every class has its special complaint, every traveller his favorite theory, and every political economist his sufficient explanation. But let the cause be what it may, the fact stands out black and repulsive. Jamaica, which came from the hand of the Creator a fair and well-watered garden, has presented for more than half a century that melancholy spectacle, too common in Equatorial America, of a land rich in every natural advantage, and yet through the misfortune or folly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... belong to a different world from that with whose denizens he was in any way familiar. Years of isolation, and a certain epicureanism of taste, from which necessity had never taken the fine edge, had made him a little intolerant. He could see nothing that was not absolutely repulsive in this woman, whose fine eyes were seeking even now to attract his admiration. She was making the best of herself. She had chosen the darkest corner of the room, and her pose was not ungraceful. ...
— A Lost Leader • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stupid, disgusting spectacle, but to Tom it seemed less repulsive than he had found it the night before. True, he at times felt a return of the old feeling of shame; the blush would occasionally suffuse his face; but such fits were rare, and he was able to carry them off more ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... beggar is a fish of as sorry aspect as may readily be scared up. Generally speaking, he is repulsive as to hat, abhorrent as to vesture, squalid of boot, and in tout ensemble unseemly and atrocious. His appeal for alms falls not more vexingly upon the ear than his offensive personality smites hard upon the eye. The touching effectiveness of his tale is ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... their fathers. If the privations of earthly enjoyments tended to strengthen their spirits and courage against adversity, and to direct their desires towards gratifications of a more elevated nature; if the repulsive conduct of their oppressors (by character hostile to all strangers, and by system constituted in different castes, each of which jealous of its own privileges) favoured in a great measure their isolation, and kept them from a pernicious contact and association, ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... dinner, taking the little bower of Dutch Johnny, the florist, by the way for a glimpse of Matty. Cousin Serena had never seen her; but I was not afraid to have her do so, unpromising object for one's charitable sympathies though she certainly was, for, the more helpless and repulsive-looking, the more would cousin Serena's tender ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... dustmen, the whole human species—as mean as caterpillars. To secure our own property and our own comfort, to dole out our sympathy according to rule just so that it won't really hurt us, is what we're all after. There's something about human nature that is awfully repulsive, and the healthier people are, the more repulsive they seem to me to be ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and often repulsive conceptions and practices of the masses of the people who represent the exoteric, or popular, phase of the teachings (and these two phases are to be found in all regions) still there is always this Inner Doctrine of the One Self, to be ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... healthily habituated to a diet which would have been positively injurious to their forebears, and no doubt individuals may be led by fortitude or by necessity in time (perhaps weeks, perhaps years) to acquire a tolerance, or even enjoyment, of food at first repulsive, and therefore injurious. The difficulty in the matter is not that of correctly determining what is physiologically sufficient for the human animal, nor even what would be a healthy diet for a community when once, after a transition ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... gave me the opportunity. Nothing in my married state has brought me pleasure and I often wish my wife would cease to love me so that we might separate. But she would be heart-broken at the suggestion and I feel driven to attempt to relieve my feelings even in a way that has previously seemed repulsive to me,—I mean by ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... now it was all love, all devotion. As a matter of fact, she tried Hollyhock very much, following her about like the kitchen cat when she smelt cream, fawning upon her in a way which soon became repulsive to Hollyhock, refusing to have any other friend, and over and over again in the day kissing Hollyhock's hands, her brow, her cheeks, her lips. All this sort of thing was pure torture to Hollyhock. But although she was terribly tried, ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... of images cannot be recommended without qualification, for it seems to require artists capable of making a worthy representation of the divine. And it must be confessed that many figures in Indian temples, such as the statues of Kali, seem repulsive or grotesque, though a Hindu might say that none of them are so strange in idea or so horrible in appearance as the crucifix. But the claim of the iconoclast from the times of the Old Testament onwards that he worships a spirit ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... and the distance nothing. If I must find fault with the later of the stories, it will not be with its general extravagance—for extravagance is part of the secret of Romance—but with the sordid and very nasty Madame Delhasse. She would be repulsive enough in any case: but as Marie's mother she is peculiarly repulsive and, let me add, improbable. Nobody looks for heredity in a tale of this sort: but even in the fairy tales it is always the heroine's step-mother who ends very fitly with a ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... quarters of Cork, Limerick, and Drogheda, present the same spectacle as Dublin, and justify the sad proverbial celebrity of 'Irish rags.' Dirt, negligence, and want of care, doubtless, go a long way in giving to destitution in Ireland its repulsive and hideous form; but who is unaware that continued and hopeless destitution engenders, as of necessity, listlessness and carelessness, and that, to enter into a struggle with poverty, there must be at least some chance of carrying off ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... had been better than this. And then they had no friend, not even an acquaintance, within some hundred miles. The men around them were not uncivil. Australian miners never are so. But they were inquisitive, familiar, and with their half-drunken good-humour, almost repulsive. It was about noon when our friends reached Henniker's, and they were told that there would be dinner at one. There was always 'grub' at one, and 'grub' at seven, and 'grub' at eight in the morning. So one of the men informed them. The same ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... This repulsive public character, tolerated but despised and loathed, was the last living creature in or about Rome who would dare to approach ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... three ten-franc notes in my hand and thought: "I will enjoy this lovely day to the full. When we get back to camp I will do without the repulsive army fare, I will dine at the St. Martin and buy a bottle of the best French wine, even if it costs me twenty francs. And then I'll walk to the little wood on the hill-slope and there I'll lie all the evening and dream or read ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... we turned into the lane that leads up the long hill to Pym, we passed a ramshackle cart, piled up with a curious miscellany of ruinous furniture. A man was driving, and beside him sat a slatternly woman and a repulsive-looking boy of ten or twelve years old, with a great swollen head ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford |
