"Shocking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the wildest demonstration of grief Coiloo appeared—Coiloo, whom Stobart had saved from death, and whom Mick had treated with such cruelty. He was in a shocking state. The brand-marks had started to fester, and there were burns all over his body. He had come at a critical time. The wailing warraguls looked at his wounds and their excitement got more and more intense. They vowed terrible vengeance against the white man who had ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... believe it till I borrowed the paper and read the whole story, with the type dancing and leaping before me. It took some hours for it to seep in, even after that, and for years I recalled every word of the damned lie as if it had been branded on me with hot irons. They called it a shocking crime, the most brutal murder California had ever known, and in the head-lines was my name in letters that struck me between the eyes like a hammer. Mrs. Dan Bennett had been foully murdered by me, ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... you two are always getting into, warrants me in saying that a keeper is needed in your store to take the entire charge of you. I wish that I could get away for a few days; I'd run up and lend you a helping hand to clear up that shocking affair. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... and shocking to our social structure. I see no escape from that, and only the hope that in that crisis the very shock of it will restore the mental balance of the nation and that all classes will combine under leaders of unselfish purpose, ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... shocking that a man should live so, held of less account than the sheep which he rears; but it is admirable that this man should live as he does. The house, to call it so, was as clean as a dairy; the children were neat, washed ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... compassion which he perceived I felt for him, now resigned himself to despair of a more sullen and horrible aspect. He sat himself down on one of the hen-coops, and gazed on us with a ghastly eye. I cannot remember ever seeing a more shocking picture ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... shocked that he did not cease to stir himself. Allow a son to disinherit himself, merely because he had fallen into the hands of a money-lending Jew before he had left college! To have the whole condition of a property changed by such a simple accident! It was shocking to him; and he moved himself in the matter with much more energy than old Mr. Caldigate had expected from him. He wrote heartrending letters to Folking, in spite of the hard words which had been said to him there. He made a second journey to Cambridge, and endeavoured ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... quite right," Dan answered unctuously. "It's just shocking the stories that are told—" and for the rest of the way he discoursed about morals, illustrating his meaning as he proceeded with ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... man?" The other, who was a portly civilian, looked at the unconscious Anstice with open interest. "Shocking affair, what? If he'd held his hand five minutes they would both have been ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... Indian shawl against a pair of beaded mittens that you would be here, to-day, before ten o'clock. So you see, you are hours before your time, and the mittens are mine. Talking of Cleone, sir, she's in the orchard. She's also in a shocking temper—indeed quite cattish, so you'd better stay here and talk to me. But then—she's alone, and looking vastly handsome, I'll admit, so, of course, you're dying ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... He knew full well that both McCoy and Quintal were in the habit of flogging their slaves, Nehow and Timoa, and otherwise treating them with great cruelty. Indeed, there had reached him a report of treatment so shocking that he could scarcely credit it, and thought it best at the time to take no notice of the rumour; but afterwards he was told of a repetition of the cruelty, and now he seemed about to witness it with his own eyes. Burning indignation ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... went to the quay. I heard a sweet young voice remark, "What a shocking bad hat!" I fell in love with her at once. She was with a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... fool, I have frequently passed for one, even among people capable of judging; this was the more vexatious, as my physiognomy and eyes promised otherwise, and expectation being frustrated, my stupidity appeared the more shocking. This detail, which a particular occasion gave birth to, will not be useless in the sequel, being a key to many of my actions which might otherwise appear unaccountable; and have been attributed to a savage humor I do not possess. I love society as much as any man, was I ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... is so great that it intrudes itself even into thy friendships!" cried Fulgence. "All vanity of that sort is a symptom of shocking egoism, and ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... The ground was shocking bad, and what made it more annoying was that, as we were attacking towards the north, and the snow lay on the northern slopes, we had to test our way every step, and keep in single file just when our ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... individual more than another. In this point they differed widely from the poor child below stairs. They seemed to recognize a universal motherhood in womankind, and cared not which individual might be the mother of the moment. I found their tameness as shocking as did Alexander Selkirk that of the brute subjects of his else solitary kingdom. It was a sort of tame familiarity, a perfect indifference to the approach of strangers, such as I never noticed in other children. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the window. The first object he beheld was the coffin which contained the body of his beloved mistress! It had been made of lead, but being found to be too short, they had, with unheard of brutality; severed her head from her body! Horror-struck with the shocking spectacle, he, from that hour, renounced all connexion with the world, and imposed upon himself the most rigid austerities, which he continued until his death, ...
— A Visit to the Monastery of La Trappe in 1817 • W.D. Fellowes
... profane language falls even more offensively from Indians than from whites; for the same reason, perhaps, that it sounds more offensive and shocking from children than from adults. Sometimes the Indian does not in the least understand the meaning of the words he uses; they are the first English words he ever heard and he hears ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... were brought to it by any improper influence? They answered that it was perfectly voluntary. I talked till reasoning was of no use, and then began to exclaim with all my might against what they were doing, telling them that it was a shocking murder. They told me it was a great act of holiness, and added in a very surly manner, that if I did not like to see it I might go farther off, and desired me to go. I told them that I would not go, that I was determined to stay and see the murder, and that I should certainly bear witness of it ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... effort to rhyme "hall" with "hurrah" I should not have remembered the second, and still another line of it, depicting the emotions of a poor widow with a large family and a small woodpile, is burned into my memory only by reason of the shocking language it contains, the more shocking in that it was deliberately put forth to be read by innocent-minded children. Poor Carrie Rinehart! When she stood up to read that, she got as red as a beet, and I believed her when she told me afterward that she ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... their trade would be stopped for a while, sowed dissension again between them. They actually set one village against the other, took a share in the contest, massacred many of the inhabitants, and carried others of them away as slaves. But shocking as this transaction might appear, there was not a single history of Africa to be read, in which scenes of as atrocious a nature were not related. They, he said, who defended this trade, were warped and blinded by their own interests, and would not be convinced of the miseries they were daily ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson
... publisher, Kearsley, having stated that he received part of the profits from the paper. His Epistle to William Hogarth (1763) was in answer to the caricature of Wilkes made during the trial. In it Hogarth's vanity and envy were attacked in an invective which Garrick quoted as "shocking and barbarous." Hogarth retaliated by a caricature of Churchill as a bear in torn clerical bands hugging a pot of porter and a club made of lies and North Britons. The Duellist (1763) is a virulent satire on the most active opponents of Wilkes in the House of Lords, especially on ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... the brilliant side of the medal is sad enough: deserted palaces, and crowded hovels scarce good enough for pigstyes. 'One day man see his dinner, and one other day none at all,' as Omar observes; and the children are shocking from bad food, dirt and overwork, but the little pot-bellied, blear-eyed wretches grow up into noble young men and women under all their difficulties. The faces are all sad and rather what the Scotch call 'dour,' not mechant ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... than to show off a fine coat; this brain, which can reflect and admire and resolve, had not such capabilities given to it in order that they might be wasted in a life of ease. Work, Nip, work; such work as a dog can do should be sought after and done, for nothing can be more shocking than to see an animal's powers, either of body or ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... of answer: "I have wondered, when you make Such a shocking, senseless clatter, Whether you ...
— Baby Chatterbox • Anonymous
... hear rather of frailty and infirmity, of petty transgressions, of occasional failings, of sudden surprisals, and of such other qualifying terms as may serve to keep out of view the true source of the evil, and without shocking the understanding, may administer consolation to the pride of human nature. The bulk of professed Christians are used to speak of man as of a being, who, naturally pure, and inclined to all virtue, is sometimes, almost involuntary, ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... the fight was ended. On returning from the shocking scene it suddenly struck me that I had seen nothing of Alphonse since the moment, some twenty minutes before — for though this fight has taken a long while to describe, it did not take long in reality — when I had been forced to ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... I slept no more. Why had I been locked in? What had passed? Who was the author of these indescribable and shocking cries? A human being? It was inconceivable. A beast? The cries were scarce quite bestial; and what animal, short of a lion or a tiger, could thus shake the solid walls of the residencia? And while I was thus turning over ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... laughed away this little mistake, and was soon busy asking questions. The Wallypug, however, got very nervous, and made a shocking lot of mistakes in his answers. He couldn't even say how old ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... prefers to let the garment dangle to its full extent outside so as to show its design in full. Again, we may consider it highly unbecoming and improper for ladies to show their lower limbs above the ankle; the Persian lady thinks nothing of that, but deems it shocking to ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... Mr. Milman has found it out. In chap. 47. (and see note 26.), Gibbon was too happy to make the most of the murder of the female philosopher Hypatia, by a Christian mob at Alexandria. But the account which he gives is more shocking than the fact. He seems not to have been familiar enough with Greek to recollect that [Greek: haneilon] means killed. Her throat was cut with an oyster-shell, because, for a reason which he has very acutely pointed out, oyster-shells were at hand; but she was clearly not "cut in pieces," ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 24. Saturday, April 13. 1850 • Various
... individual taken the pains to preserve and publish one-half the good things that were said at our meetings, a large volume might be formed that would be no contemptible specimen of genius. Whenever a member had the audacity to perpetrate some shocking bad pun, and such enormities were frequent, the offender was sentenced to undergo some ludicrous punishment; and the utmost good-humor ...
— My Life: or the Adventures of Geo. Thompson - Being the Auto-Biography of an Author. Written by Himself. • George Thompson
... life of the conqueror of Marathon. The last act of it," continues Mr Grote, "produces an impression so mournful, and even shocking—his descent from the pinnacle of glory, to defeat, mean tampering with a temple-servant, mortal bodily hurt, undefended ignominy, and death under a sentence of heavy fine, is so abrupt and unprepared—that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... to recollect what she had said that was so shocking, for the idea of Flora's worldly motives was no novelty to her. They had appeared in too many instances; and, though frightened at his anger, she stood still, without ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... new passion had taken possession of his breast, and he was laying deep schemes to gratify it. His own wife was ill-favoured and ill-natured; Dee's was comely and agreeable: and he longed to make an exchange of partners, without exciting the jealousy or shocking the morality of Dee. This was a difficult matter; but, to a man like Kelly, who was as deficient in rectitude and right feeling as he was full of impudence and ingenuity, the difficulty was not insurmountable. He had also deeply studied the character and the foibles ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... government treated the Czech nation with special brutality. The persecutions in Bohemia were opposed not only to the liberal ideas of Czechs, but especially to their national feelings. The anxiety of the censor for the safety of the monarchy often bordered on absurdity. The word 'shocking' was deleted from a play, for instance, because it was English. Henry IV. was not allowed to be played 'until we reach a settlement with England,' and it was only when it was reported by the Vienna and Berlin papers that the prohibition ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... she was now to be a grown-up Christian. The organ pealed forth solemnly, and the sweet children's voices mingled with that of their old leader; but Karen thought only of her red shoes. In the afternoon the old lady heard from everybody that Karen had worn red shoes. She said that it was a shocking thing to do, that it was very improper, and that Karen was always to go to church in future in black shoes, ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... bad business," moaned Uncle Donald, having gone through the movements once more. "Shocking bad business. If your poor father were alive, whatch think he'd say to your tearing across the world after this girl? I'll tell you what he'd say. He'd say... ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... It was the most shocking experience that Max had ever known, and the blood seemed to freeze in his veins as he stood by the table watching his friend, trying to conjure back a smile to his own face and look of ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... and other things—when they come pouring out, they are out, and they are done; but the more peevishness comes out of you, the more there seems to be left in. 'Tis not oft, look you, it really comes right outside: that would be shocking! but 'tis a deal too often. And I do want to be like ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... astonishing departure; for, taking his driver unawares, he suddenly started after the flying white steed, breaking into a lumbering gallop, that set plumes nodding, curtains flapping, and glasses rattling, and made the huge unwieldly vehicle lurch and bob about in a way to threaten a shocking catastrophe. ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... not but assent to that; and the king, who seemed a good deal diverted at the accident—for he loves little babies too well to look upon it, as most people would, to be a shocking business—questioned ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... fantastic fairyland without some outlandish accompaniment such as a chorus garbed as birds or frogs? But we reserve fuller discussion of this point until later. We might suggest an interesting comparison to the nonsense verse of W. S. Gilbert, which represents the most shocking ideas in a style even nonchalantly matter-of-fact. Does Gilbert by any chance actually wish us to believe that "Gentle Alice Brown," in the poem of the same name, really assisted in "cutting up a ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... than when I arrived. After a long hesitation, permission was given me niggardly to leave Tripoli, and my ship's boatmen pointed out the urgent need to supply a certain rowboat in the bay with that morsel of paper. To lose that tiny document would have a shocking result, for a warship was in the bay to support the rowboat. We passed that warship. Some day a hilarious traveller will tear his document into fragments, and that warship will fire at him, and sink. The system here, a mere tabulation of fear and ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... ruined and despairing, was drinking himself to death with the riffraff of Rangoon, or with such of it as would listen to his abuse of the white women and his slanders upon their honesty. The contrast between Shere Ali's fate and the hopes with which he had set out was shocking enough. Yet even in his case so very little had turned the scale. Between the fulfilment of his hopes and the great failure what was there? If he had been sent to Ajmere instead of to England, if he and Linforth had not crossed the Meije to La Grave in Dauphine, if a necklace ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... loyal support and, what is more, very material assistance to Mr Dillon and his friends, was not himself a Member of Parliament, but was doing far better work as a citizen, studying, from his quiet retreat on the shores of Clew Bay, the shocking conditions of the Western peasantry, who were compelled to eke out an existence of starvation and misery amid the crags and moors and fastnesses of the west, whilst almost from their very doorsteps there stretched away mile upon mile of the rich green pastures from which ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... his forehead and dyed it almost black. Now, at this terrible moment, the likeness between the two brothers, so different in spirit, can be seen; the flashing eyes, the scornful lips, the deadly hatred. It is a shocking likeness, ...
— A Little Rebel • Mrs. Hungerford
... a shocking bad hat!" was the phrase that was next in vogue. No sooner had it become universal, than thousands of idle but sharp eyes were on the watch for the passenger whose hat showed any signs, however slight, of ancient service. Immediately the cry arose, and, like the what-whoop ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... car went on, wabbling and lurching and dipping on its way, the heights on either side made Bordman tend to dizziness. The coloring was impossible. The aridness, the desiccation, the lifelessness of everything about was somehow shocking. Bordman found himself straining his eyes for the merest, scrubbiest of bushes and for however stunted and isolated a ...
— Sand Doom • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... one-hoss shay about to collapse, the whole fabric of the resuscitated plant, leaking at a score of joints, creaking, whistling, shaking, voicing a hundred agonized mechanic woes, revived in a grotesque, absurd and shocking imitation of its one-time ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... know everything—why we believe this and why we believe that, doctrines which no one else ever dreams of questioning, and he cannot seem to make them clear to her mind. Some of her questions are so irreverent as to be positively shocking to a ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... knife. Extended along a line that bisected the wigwam, at a distance of perhaps twelve feet from the floor, were the scalps of his enemies. Judging from the great quantity of these ghastly trophies, my master was a man of immense valor and shocking brutality. ...
— Seven and Nine years Among the Camanches and Apaches - An Autobiography • Edwin Eastman
... as sharp with your work min' as you are with your tongue, I don't care if I give you a job. Look here: my coachman left me in a huff this morning, and it was time too, as I find now he is gone. The stable is in a shocking mess: if you clean it out, and set things to rights—but I don't believe you can—I will ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... him into the chimney-corner, and down into a seat; and then what did this sly, shocking girl do but sit on his knee and tell him nobody ever had such a papa before, and she could never possibly love any one half so much as she loved him, and weren't he and she going to have a ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... admitting the soundness of Martin's verdict, for my part I feel that my experiences during that week left me with memories not perhaps more shocking, but certainly more humiliating and disgraceful to England, than the picture burnt into my mind by the Westminster Riot. I will mention two ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... avowal of guilt, were stated in a Life of Savage now lying before me, which came out so early as 1727, and no attempt had been made to confute it, or to punish the authour or printer as a libeller: but for the honour of human nature, we should be glad to find the shocking tale not true; and, from a respectable gentleman[493] connected with the lady's family, I have received such information and remarks, as joined to my own inquiries, will, I think, render it at least somewhat doubtful, especially when ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... Woodson became acting Governor until the arrival of Gov. Geary in September, the belligerents had matters pretty much their own way, and the ruffians improved the time, under pretense of authority from Woodson, to perpetrate with impunity the most shocking barbarities. ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... side, where the heart is very bad, the genius and taste, if there happen to be any pretensions to them, will be found shocking and unnatural. NERO would be nothing less than a poet; but his verses were what one may call most villainously bad. His taste of magnificence and luxury was horribly glaring, extravagant and ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... cosmic consciousness, as the brightest of our domestic animals to-day are on the borders of self-consciousness. He sees that Woman will be the great teacher when humanity rises. Every thing is bright to him in this shocking modern hour, for it heralds the advent of the Risen Woman!... Yes, I am full of this. I have been getting his letters, and writing about the things he has made me think. The good that we do for the race—comes back—for we are the race always. I've already found so much that is good in the world, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... supposes that the public interest will prevail over private inclination. There was nothing in this very shocking to the notions of Greeks, among whom the feeling of love towards the other sex was almost deprived of sentiment or romance. Married life is to be regulated solely with a view to the good of the state. The newly-married couple are not allowed to absent themselves from their ...
— Laws • Plato
... Oh! too, too shocking! barbarous, savage taste! To eat one's mother ere itself was born! To gripe the tall town-steeple by the waste, And scoop it out to be ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... his weapon, then, suddenly, with all the force and hatred he could muster, he sent a blistering, shocking thought toward the man with ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... ever see such frights as poor Mrs. Feathertop has got?" said Dame Scratchard. "I knew what would come of HER family—all deformed, and with a dreadful sort of madness which makes them love to shovel mud with those shocking spoon-bills of theirs." ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Calabrese. Finally, and this is an essential point, Beaudenord was not too handsome, like some of our friends that look rather too much of professional beauties to be anything else; but no more of that; we have said it, it is shocking! Well, he was a crack shot, and sat a horse to admiration; he had fought a duel for a trifle, and had ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... discard their woolen garments for ones of goat skin. The Gerns would regard them as primitive inferiors at best and it might be of advantage to heighten the impression. It would make the awakening of the Gerns a little more shocking. ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... that's quite right as you see it. No, don't take the trouble to contradict me; let me do the talking for a minute. You're so critical and so conventional and so correct! No matter how much you say you aren't, you are. And while we're like this I don't have to care. I rather enjoy shocking you. And while I'm none of your business, you don't have to care what I do or what I'm like. We can have our fun and be awfully fond of each other, and it's all serene and right. But if I were Mrs. Gerald Fane, all my faults and shortcomings, ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... rest, sweat, dust, fasting and sleeplessness had made of this a face whose horror was but increased by the alertness of the eyes, which shone with so shocking a blueness that the woman, finding them unlike any eyes which she had seen before, called them to herself, "evil eyes—the eyes of ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... seriously endeavour to conquer a Passion for a Man who proves himself unworthy her Love, it will always be to me a strong Proof of her steady Constancy to a Man she has Reason to esteem. I would have had Emma stood Henry's shocking Tryal as Macduff in the Tragedy of Macbeth does that of Malcolm, and when he had proved himself unworthy her least Affection; I think, in the Words of Macduff she might ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... of the people at large were throughout on the side of France. Florence had never ceased to confess with shocking naivete its old Guelph preference for the French. And when Charles VIII actually appeared on the south of the Alps, all Italy accepted him with an enthusiasm which to himself and his followers seemed unaccountable. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... age of humanity—as far, at least, as England is concerned. A man who beats his wife is shocking to us, and a colonel who cannot manage his soldiers without having them beaten is nearly equally so. We are not very fond of hanging; and some of us go so far as to recoil under any circumstances from taking ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... opinion that the shocking people ought to be tried as traitors and made to support ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Carthaginians came back to the field to plunder the dead bodies of the Romans. The whole field presented a most shocking spectacle to the view. The bodies of horses and men lay mingled in dreadful confusion, as they had fallen, some dead, others still alive, the men moaning, crying for water, and feebly struggling from time to time to disentangle themselves from the heaps of carcasses under which they were ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... said Lucy, smiling in her turn, "it is certainly very strange that she can please neither of us. The outline she gave me of your character was quite shocking. She said you were—what's this you said of him, Mrs. Mainwaring—oh, it was very bad, sir. I think we must deprive her of all claim to the character of an artist. Do you know I was afraid to meet the original, in consequence ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... drop from their places—yea, the spirit to faint. What is empaling or sawing men alive, tearing off the flesh piecemeal with iron pincers, or broiling the flesh with candles, collop fashion, or squeezing heads flat in a vice, and all the most shocking devices which ever were upon earth, compared with one of these? Mere pastime! Here were a hundred thousand shoutings, hoarse sighs, and strong groans; yonder a boisterous wailing and horrible outcry answering them, and the howling of a dog is sweet, delicious music, when compared with these ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... my shocking doctrines (entrenched behind a broad, book-laden desk), my eyes were attracted to the face of a slender black-bearded young man whose shining eyes and occasional smiling nod indicated a joyous agreement with the main points of my harangue. I had never ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... Louisa, with her usual frankness, finds the Edinburgh lawyers tedious, in the introduction, and thinks that Mr. Saddletree "will not entertain English readers." The conclusion "flags"; "but the chief fault I have to find relates to the reappearance and shocking fate of the boy. I hear on all sides 'Oh, I do not like that!' I cannot say what I would have had instead, but I do not like it either; it is a lame, huddled conclusion. I know you so well in it, by-the-by! You grow tired yourself, want to get rid of the story, and hardly care how." ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Even Dalica, who knew as much wickedness as most people, would have stared at this unheard of villany, and have asked, as eagerly as I did—'What is it now? Let's have a shy at it in Egypt.' I, indeed, knew a case, but Dalica did not, of shocking over-colonization. It was the case, which even yet occurs on out-of-the-way roads, where a man, unjustly big, mounts into the inside of a stage-coach already sufficiently crowded. In streets and squares, where men could ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... essential and important. Or he may be a religious preacher, or a religious reformer of his day, bound, in virtue of character, to maintain truth at the risk of being unpopular; or, it may be, to prosecute inquiries and reforms at the risk of shocking ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... three of the scenes that I was compelled to witness seem, even now, to be etched on my memory in lines of blood. About nine o'clock, for example, I went into a small wall-tent which sheltered a dozen or more dangerously wounded Spaniards and Cuban insurgents. Everything that I saw there was shocking. On the right-hand side of the tent, face downward and partly buried in the water-soaked, oozy ground, lay a half-naked Cuban boy, nineteen or twenty years of age, who had died in the night. He had been wounded in the head and at some time ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... to-night. They say the Austrians have taken Vulatch. Shocking, our lack of ammunition.... God! ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... the family, except Margaret Evesham, who was provided with a philosophy of her own, which amounted almost to a gentle obtuseness, and made her a comfortable non-conductor, preventing more electric souls from shocking ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... poor fellow who had endeavored to save Major Bertram. Another, who had both his legs broken, was missing, as he had crawled away from his comrades, that he might die in quiet. But eight days afterwards, he was found alive, though in a shocking state, as his feet were frozen off. Yet he survived all this, and reached Quebec at a future period. Most of the party set out, leaving three behind them, who were unable to walk from bruises, and directed their course towards the rising sun, but when ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... the sense of shame in her own bosom, when once she has lost sight of the basis on which reputation, honour, every thing that should be dear to the female heart, rests, she grows hardened in guilt, and will spare no pains to bring down innocence and beauty to the shocking level with herself: and this proceeds from that diabolical spirit of envy, which repines at seeing another in the full possession of that respect and esteem which she can no ...
— Charlotte Temple • Susanna Rowson
... be chaffed about that at the Club in the delicate manner those brutes of men affect, and the Hawley Boy will tell me all about it—softening the details for fear of shocking me. That boy is too good to live, Polly. I've serious thoughts of recommending him to throw up his Commission and go into the Church. In his present frame of mind he would obey me. Happy, ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... undertaking, almost divine, that might have lifted him and his scions to the delights of Olympus; seen from Rome, by his childhood's friends, by his comrades in arms, by that people of Italy who still so much admired him, it was the shocking crime of faithlessness to his country; we call it high treason. Therefore he hesitates long, doubting most of all whether he can keep for the new Egyptian Empire the Roman legions, made up largely of Italians, all commanded by Italian officers. He does not know how to oppose a resolute No to ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... catastrophe; and it reads in the closet as well as it would affect us on the stage. I was not, however, astonished at this; what men hear, and do not understand, is always tedious; and it was recited in so shocking a tone by the actress, who, not having entirely recovered from a fit of illness, was flurried by the tumult of the audience. She declaimed in a twanging tone like psalm-singing; so that the audience could not hear, among the fatiguing discordances (he means their own hissing), ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... made down the river, it didn't enter anybody's head to trouble how they would live. Certainly they had brought with them some rotten hippo-meat, which couldn't have lasted very long, anyway, even if the pilgrims hadn't, in the midst of a shocking hullabaloo, thrown a considerable quantity of it overboard. It looked like a high-handed proceeding; but it was really a case of legitimate self-defense. You can't breathe dead hippo waking, sleeping, and eating, and at the same time keep your precarious grip on ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... of the commonwealth of books. No doubt the stimulus of such a social occasion brought him, as well as the strangers, into new acquaintance with his growing gifts. But presently one of the ladies, evidently the favorite until this shocking moment, began to speak of the theatre, and asked for the pleasure of his presence at the play that very night, she herself being the leading player. At this disclosure, and the frank talk of the rest ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... first Zeppelins, the corridor connecting the two cars was wholly outside the frame and envelope of the car. Later the perilous experiment was tried of putting it within the envelope. This resulted in one of the most shocking of the many Zeppelin disasters. In the case of the ship L-II., built in 1912, the corridor became filled with gas that had oozed out of the ballonets. At one end or the other of the corridor this gas, then mixed with air, came in contact with fire,—perhaps the exhaust of the engines,—a ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... navy. Among other things, the latter asked me if there were not many railroad and steamboat accidents in America. O my countrymen, what trouble do you make us in foreign lands by your terrible carelessness! I was obliged, in candor, to say that I thought there was a shocking number of accidents of that sort, and suggested the best excuse I could think of—our youth and inexperience; but I certainly thought my venerable friend had touched ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... we must imagine, must be extremely shocking, and add a new sting to his former affliction; and here it was that he began to exercise the philosopher, and to demonstrate himself both a wise and a good man. All these things, thinks he, are the will of Providence, ...
— Dickory Cronke - The Dumb Philosopher, or, Great Britain's Wonder • Daniel Defoe
... contemporaries as exciting, agreeable, above all as hopeful. Let me therefore try to bring back something of the atmosphere of that time by describing a scene, very characteristic of its superstitions, in which I took what was then considered an unspeakably shocking part. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... too stimulating and aggressive for any gentleman's hours of ease. Her cookery would have been about as sketchy as her handwriting, which was generally quite illegible, and she would have made, I feel sure, a shocking bad nurse. Yet you mustn't imagine she was an inelegant or unbeautiful woman, and she is inconceivable to me in high collars or any sort of masculine garment. But her soul was bony, and at the base ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... blue-eyed goose! You only think it's shocking, because you're so prim and straight-laced! I'll tell Uncle Jeff, myself, and ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells
... (paltry) 643; injured &c; deteriorated &c 659; unsatisfactory, exceptionable indifferent; below par &c (imperfect) 651; illcontrived, ill-conditioned; wretched, sad, grievous, deplorable, lamentable; pitiful, pitiable, woeful &c (painful) 830. evil, wrong; depraved &c 945; shocking; reprehensible &c (disapprove) 932. hateful, hateful as a toad; abominable, detestable, execrable, cursed, accursed, confounded; damned, damnable; infernal; diabolic &c (malevolent) 907. unadvisable &c (inexpedient) 647; unprofitable &c (useless) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... National Guard. One day the Dauphin's footmen all appeared in this uniform, and the king's porters, and almost every man about the palace. What displeased the king yet more was, that the singers in the royal chapel appeared in the same dress. It was absurd and shocking to see their part of divine service performed by men in the uniform of grenadiers. The king said so, and forbade that any person should appear in his presence again in that dress. But the time was past for the king's orders to be obeyed. He was ...
— The Peasant and the Prince • Harriet Martineau
... would pull 'im up the fust time, and the second he'd order Bill to 'it 'im, being afraid of 'urting 'im too much 'imself. 'Arf the men 'ad to leave off talking altogether when Joe was by, but the way they used to swear when he wasn't was something shocking. Harry Moore got clergyman's sore ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... certain distances. He brought it to me, when I knew it to be the same I had seen upon the lady's neck who was poisoned; and concluded it had broken off and fallen. I could not look upon it without shedding tears, when I called to mind the lovely creature I had seen die in such a shocking manner. I wrapped it up, and put ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the wreck. Knowing that something was wrong, I called a couple of hands, and in a few minutes was pulled on board, where I found the old carpenter lying writhing in agony, his features presenting a truly shocking and terrifying appearance. His revolver lay on the deck near him—he had fired it to bring assistance. I need not here describe the peculiarly drastic remedies adopted by the natives to save the man's life. They at first thought the case was a hopeless one, but by daylight ...
— John Corwell, Sailor And Miner; and, Poisonous Fish - 1901 • Louis Becke
... our yards, which are most known, and therefore best understood. At first the peacock, with his gorgeous train, demands our attention; but, like most of the gaudy birds, his notes are grating and shocking to the ear: the yelling of cats, and the braying of an ass, are not more disgustful. The voice of the goose is trumpet-like, and clanking; and once saved the Capitol at Rome, as grave historians assert: the hiss also ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... wandered off to the poor souls in Peter Port, hopefully speculating on the luck we were like to have, counting on the return of those whose broken bodies were dredging the bottom below me,—to the shocking completeness of our disasters. Truly when it all came back on me like that I felt inclined at times to loose my hold and have done with life. And then the thought of Carette, and my mother, and my grandfather, and Krok, would brace me to further precarious clinging ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Butler has sentenced Mrs. Phillips for laughing while the corpse of a Federal officer[7] was passing—at least, that is to be the principal charge, though I hope, for the sake of Butler's soul, that he had better reasons. Shocking as her conduct was, she hardly deserved two years' close confinement in such a dreadful place as that, because she happened to have no sense of ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... of regret to us that we climbed up to the triumphal arch, which appeared so noble in the distance, with the trees behind it. For when we reached it, we found that it was built of wood, painted and sanded, and in a shocking state of decay; and the grove to which it admitted us was only a scant assemblage of sickly locust-trees, which seemed to be tired of battling with the unfavorable climate, and had, in fact, already retired ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... life and shocking death, with its impressive lessons, appears at first to have been kept extant only by oral tradition. Nearly forty years passed before it was written down and printed. But then, indeed, the book ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... opinion? Whiskey "fellers" feeling badly, Cigar-sellers smoking madly, Bondsmen looking sorely, sadly, If their signatures are clear, If you will not cost them dear, If in court they must appear Mournfully, in doubt and fear. Oh! you weak, unfeeling cuss, To get them in this shocking muss; How their pocket-books will rue it! J.F.B., how could you do it? Are you putting for the West, Did you take French leave for Brest, Have you feathered well your nest, Do you sweetly take your rest; Say, whom do you like the best— COOK, or ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 2, April 9, 1870 • Various
... "I, myself, witnessed this shocking scene," continued Lady Aurex, "and so did many other Skeezers. The news was carried to the Flatheads, who then turned from friends to enemies. The Su-dic and his wife Rora were the only ones on the mountain ...
— Glinda of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... you make it so. If you will come now, we can be married in a few hours, and you can be safe in your own home. I realize now that this is unexpected and shocking to you, but if you will come with me and allow me to restore you to health and strength, and if, say, in a year, you are convinced that you do not love me, I will set you free. If you will come, I swear to you that ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... Shocking though it appears to all who encounter it for the first time, the device is actually perfectly valid, legal C. C's default {fall through} in case statements has long been its most controversial single feature; Duff observed that "This code forms some sort of argument in that ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... Mr. Slope, felt at the present rather abashed. He hardly knew how to frame his little request in language sufficiently modest. He had recognized and acknowledged to himself the necessity of shocking the bishop in the first instance by the temerity of his application, and his difficulty was how best to remedy that by his adroitness and eloquence. "I doubted myself," said he, "whether your lordship would have anyone immediately ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... very wealthy woman. Previous to that year I had given away a great deal for charity, but I had a hobby and that hobby was to establish a humane Insane Asylum. I had seen so much cruelty practiced in different institutions where I happened to know some of the inmates, and I had heard of such shocking treatment received by patients, that I resolved to establish a reform. I gave my handsome home for the Asylum. I spent large sums in fitting it up, so that it might seem like a beautiful resort to the poor souls, and as Tom told you, I succeeded in what ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... one day, shocking the old woman, "why should I wear black clothes when papa is so happy? It is almost as if he had gone to Europe to meet mamma. Sometimes I long to have him back, then it seems as if I envied her, when she only had him three years, so ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... "frightful agitation" as he sat on the bench, and all this dreadful work was going on; and I return to it, to describe it as far as words can convey an idea of the shocking spectacle. I could only imagine something like it in the overwrought painting of a powerful romance-writer, but never before could conceive the physical suffering of a strong muscular man, under the tortures of a distracted mind. Whilst his language was cool, the agonies which ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... an aggravating farrago of filth and oddity, under which they suspected some formal allegory or meaning which had perished, or was impenetrable. Learn this, ye prigs of morality, that no work of genius ever yet demoralised a dolt or ignoramus. Even the Old Testament, with all its stores of the "shocking," really does very little harm. It requires mind for mind in reading, and vice becomes unattractive even to the vicious when they cannot understand it. I did understand Rabelais, and the Moyen de Parvenir, and the Cymbalum Mundi, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... fate of my parents proved too true; for soon after I left them they were killed and scalped, together with Robert, Matthew, Betsey, and the woman and her two children, and mangled in the most shocking manner. ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... their race; and they have often suffered the penalty of the law, when they have not in the least deserved it. They have been talked of by the public, and prosecuted by the authorities, as the perpetrators of every vice and wickedness alike shocking to civil and savage life. Nor is this to be wondered at, living as they do, so remote from observation and the walks of ...
— The Gipsies' Advocate - or, Observations on the Origin, Character, Manners, and Habits of - The English Gipsies • James Crabb
... in a field of thistles and nettles. It was encircled by a muddy ditch, and a little further on was a tiny thatched cottage, out of which came the Yellow Dwarf with a very jaunty air. He wore wooden shoes and a little yellow coat, and as he had no hair and very long ears he looked altogether a shocking little object. ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... success, by which the Spanish monarchy became master of the whole Pyrenean peninsula and its many colonies in East and West, it was all the more necessary for the other two powers to hold together. Many causes of quarrel indeed arose between them. How could the shocking event of the night of St. Bartholomew fail to awaken all the antipathies of the English, and indeed of Protestantism in general! Elizabeth did not let herself be prevented by her treaty from supporting the French Protestants in the manner she liked, ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... held in Fetter Lane, Count Zinzendorf, said Rimius, had declared that the seventh commandment was not binding on Christians, and had recommended immorality to his congregation.131 It is impossible to give the modern reader a true idea of the shocking picture of the Brethren painted by Rimius. For malice, spite, indecency and unfairness, his works would be hard to match even in the vilest literature of the eighteenth century. As his books came out in rapid succession, the picture he drew grew more and more disgusting. He wrote ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... to mention the subject to me till my mind was quite made up about it. They respected my wish, and said no more; but they lent me books to read which assisted in strengthening my wavering resolution. Among these books was the Life of Madame de Montmorenci, who, after the shocking death of her husband, entered the Order of St. Mary. The great example of this lady made me reflect seriously, and I communicated my thoughts, as a matter of course, to Father Deveaux. He assured ...
— A Fair Penitent • Wilkie Collins
... clutched me that night, I went to my window and looked abroad over Our Square, as Willy Woolly's memorial clock was striking four (it being actually five-thirty). A shocking sight afflicted my eyes. My bench was occupied by a bum. Hearing the measured footsteps of Terry the Cop, guardian of our destinies, I looked for a swift and painful eviction. Terry, after a glance, passed on. Nothing is worse for insomnia than an unsolved mystery. ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... fever of his punctuality his blood began to boil, and he walked up and down the hall with great steps, talking with himself: "It is shocking, though," argued he, "that they never are ready! but I won't be angry! Even if they make me angry, I will not spoil their pleasure. But patience is necessary, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... increasing. In some of the busy centres the tables of mortality show that the proportion of nerve deaths has multiplied more than twenty times in the last forty years, and that now the nerve deaths number more than one-fourth of all the deaths recorded. What is most shocking in these returns, this fearful loss of life occurs mainly among young ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... "But underneath all this shocking burlesque upon legislative proceedings, we must not forget that there is something very real to this uncouth and untutored multitude. It is not all sham, nor all burlesque. They have a genuine interest ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... a shocking sight, After the field was won, For many a thousand bodies here Lay rotting in the sun. But things like that, you know, must be After ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... The shocking ruin to human life in the evacuated region is of even greater moment. The half-starved civilians of Bapaume were forced to make trenches there and later for the defense of Cambrai also. All men and boys strong enough to work were taken along with the ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... "A shocking child murder has just been committed at Nottingham. A girl named Wragg left the workhouse there on Saturday morning with her young illegitimate child. The child was soon afterwards found dead on Mapperly Hills, having been ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... Figures are the most shocking things in the world. The prettiest little squiggles of black—looked at in the right light, and yet consider the blow they can give you upon the heart. You return from a little careless holiday abroad, and turn over ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... when she realized it was there, she promptly banished it. Alas! It was too late. The rascal had been peeping through his fingers, and, with a ringing laugh, he sprang to his feet, caught both her hands, and cried, "Shocking, wasn't ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... as if to search for something on the extreme horizon. The air was very quiet and he thought that he could hear her sigh. Then she turned and re-entered the House, while Heritage by his side began to curse under his breathe with a shocking fervour. ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... midst of shocking and terrible scenes, but he heeded them not as much as he would have heeded the smallest accident to a fellow-creature a few hours before. Already he seemed familiar with battles and all their horrors. Men were hurrying by with medical stores. The ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... the devil, you croaking old vagabond," exclaimed Phil, raising his whip, and letting it fall upon her almost naked shoulders, with a force as unmanly, as it was cruel, and impious, and shocking. ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the State or of laissez faire. It is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution * * * I think that the word 'liberty,' in the Fourteenth Amendment is perverted when it is held to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion, ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... his death-bed that God would forgive him for having taught Christianity. I have seen a Vicar in Dorsetshire relinquish a living of L200 a year, and confess to his parishioners that his conscience would not permit him to preach the shocking absurdities of the Christians. But neither the will nor the testament of John Meslier, nor the declaration of this worthy Vicar, are what I consider decisive proofs. Uriel Acosta, a Jew, publicly renounced the Old Testament in ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... grain. It was almost impossible to get help, for the reason that the dry weather had hastened the reaping of all early crops. It was decided that Elizabeth should drive back and forth with the water, and John take a hand at the shocking. This left Hugh on the machine, a thing John disliked to do, but Hugh made no complaints and accepted the post readily. Hugh had seen that he could not refer to his health without endangering his chance of getting ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... too strong for the facts of the case. Injustice, cruelty, and rapine have always been the watchwords of the Transvaal Boers. The stories of wholesale slaughter in the earlier days of the Republic are very numerous. One of the best known of those shocking occurrences took place in the Zoutpansberg war in 1865. On this occasion a large number of Kafirs took refuge in caves, where the Boers smoked them to death. Some years afterwards Dr. Wangeman, whose account is, I believe, thoroughly reliable, describes the scene ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... society, he wanted to know? Though he had tried hard not to, he had been forced to admit that It was d——d disgraceful. He had never, he reflected aloud, seen anything like it during an active army existence that had provided many shocking sights. And he opined that there would be fatigues and C.B.s and court-martials and shootings-at-dawn if It continued. He was good, even ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... the private office, looking rather dumfounded into each other's blank faces, and in less than half an hour afterward every employee in the vast dry goods establishment heard the shocking news, that Mr. Lester Armstrong, whom they all believed well-nigh perfect, was terribly intoxicated up in his private office, but they were to be still more astounded ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... of civilization has any Christian people stooped to such shocking brutality and indescribable barbarism as that which characterized the people of Paris, Texas, and adjacent communities on the first of February, 1893. The cause of this awful outbreak of human passion was the murder of a four-year-old ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... preceded nor followed by anything with which they harmonise. They give to the whole book something of the grotesque character of those Chinese pleasure-grounds in which perpendicular rocks of granite start up in the midst of a soft green plain. Invention is shocking where truth is in such close juxtaposition ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... in their privities, some having two and some three, being put in below the skin, which is cut for that purpose, one on one side and another on the other, which they do when 25 or 30 years of age. These were devised that they might not abuse the male sex, to which shocking vice they were formerly much addicted. It was also ordained, that the women should not have more than three cubits of cloth in their under garments, which likewise are open before, and so tight, that when they walk they shew the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... tremendous crash. Sam's teeth came together with a snap, and the shooscarle uttered a roar; no wonder, poor fellow, for his seat being over the axle, and having no spring to it, the shock which he received must have been absolutely shocking! However, they got over that without damage, and the river was crossed ...
— Chasing the Sun • R.M. Ballantyne
... "That's old Lord Dudley, and he has a trick of thinking aloud. People used to be offended, but they take no notice of him now. It was only last week, when he was dining at Lord Elgin's, that he apologized to the company for the shocking bad cooking. He thought he was at his own table, you see. It gives him a place of his own in society. That's Lord Harewood he has fastened on to now. Harewood's peculiarity is to mimic the Prince in everything. ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Moreover what he called his park, He turned into a kind of ark For dogs, because a little bark Is a good tonic in the dark, If one is given to waking; 260 But things went on from bad to worse, His curs were nothing but a curse, And, what was still more shocking, Foul ghosts of living fowl made scoff And would not think of going off In ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... away, saying, "How shocking such things were!" and Thorn, with a smile which did not, however, light up ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... detest them! views of battles, murders, and death! Shocking! shocking!—I shrink from them ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... common to all living beings, and that their endless diversities are bound together by a physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In fact, when first apprehended, such a doctrine as this appears almost shocking to common sense. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... dragged forth and put to death like gladiators for their diversion. While the soldiers were intent on slaughter, these miscreants were employed in plundering. The greatest part of the booty fell to their share. Rome presented a scene truly shocking, a medley of savage slaughter and monstrous vice; in one place war and desolation; in another bathing, riot, and debauchery. The whole city seemed to be inflamed with frantic rage, and at the same time intoxicated with bacchanalian pleasures. In the midst of rage and massacre, pleasure knew no intermission. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... tell me about you as easily as it could tell you about me?" said Mrs. Gannett. "There was more magic in that bird than you thought, Jem. It used to say shocking things about you. ...
— Sea Urchins • W. W. Jacobs
... approach her. In these fearful moments the dreadful confession of all her premeditated guilt, of her infuriate and disappointed passion for Wallace, and her vowed revenge, were revealed, under circumstances so shocking, that the English governor declared to the King of Scots, while he conducted him toward her apartment, that he would rather wear out his life in a rayless dungeon, then endure one hour of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... thralls of law and grinding oppression. Had his generous friend not been absent from England at the fatal time, it is very probable that the dreadful catastrophe would have been averted; but he only landed from the continent to receive the shocking intelligence that all was over. Friendship could but shed the unavailing tear, but it did not forget or neglect the dear family interests for which (in some measure) the despairing sacrifice was made. It is ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... soon perceived to be only too true during the days spent at Nanci. To the two young sisters the condition of things was less evident. To Margaret their presence was such sunshine, that they usually saw her in her highest, most flighty, and imprudent spirits, taking at times absolute delight in shocking her two duennas; and it was in this temper that, one hot noon day, coming after an evening of song and music, finding Alain Chartier asleep on a bench in the garden, she declared that she must kiss the mouth from which such sweet strains proceeded, and bending down, imprinted so light a kiss as ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the babies though, so he had to take my picture sitting on a rock, with one twin on each arm. If you'll believe it, the babies came out beautifully in the picture, and I was almost as black as a coal. It was like a judgment on me, for I knew my lady would think it shocking in me to carry the two ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... insane, but the man's actions were not those of a maniac. No! He actually believed and—and these fellows believed also. No doubt they would continue to think him guilty in spite of all that he could do or say; for after this shocking denunciation it would take more than mere words to prove that he had not betrayed his friend and benefactor. It was incredible, unbearable! He wanted to shout his innocence at them, to beat it into their heads; but the more he ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... the body disinterred and brought into Richmond. It was buried at night in a spot unknown to anyone save the Confederate authorities. Feeling had run so high on the discovery of the purpose of the raiders to burn the city that the Confederate President feared some shocking indignity might be ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... Septimus, on thinking the matter over, agreed with her. Memories came back to him of the men with whom he had been intimate. His father, the mechanical man who had cogs instead of corpuscles in his blood, Wiggleswick the undesirable, a few rowdy men on his staircase at Cambridge who had led shocking lives—once making a bonfire of his pyjamas and a brand-new umbrella in the middle of the court—and had since come to early and disastrous ends. His impressions of the sex were distinctly bad. Germs of unutterable depravity, he was sure, lurked ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... will turn to account in that way. Such is the logic of a sensible man, and what follows? We dry up our tears, and have the satisfaction, perhaps, to discover that a transaction, which, morally considered, was shocking, and without a leg to stand upon, when tried by principles of Taste, turns out to be a very meritorious performance. Thus all the world is pleased; the old proverb is justified, that it is an ill wind which blows nobody good; the amateur, from looking bilious and sulky, by too close ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... of prey, a wolf, whose natural state is war, and that government is only a contrivance of men for their own gain, a strong chain thrown over the citizen,—organized, despotic, unprincipled power. To this faithless and impious work, which at least did good by shocking the world and rallying many of the best minds to develop and defend the true principles of society and the state, he put a fit frontispiece, a picture of the vast form of Leviathan, the Sovereign State, the Mortal God,—a gigantic figure, like that of Giant ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... it into her head to marry Silius, a young man with whom she was very much in love, who belonged to a distinguished family, and who was the consul-designate. According to them, for the pleasure of shocking the imperial city with the sacrilege of a bigamous union, she actually did marry him in Rome, with the most solemn religious rites, while Claudius was at Ostia! But is this credible, at least without admitting that Messalina had suddenly gone insane? To what end and for what reason ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... I shall have to speak to Mary again. It's quite shocking to have her go on so. But really and truly do let us have a Society. It would be so jolly. We could meet on Saturday afternoons, and write pieces and have signals and a secret, as Sylvia's Society did when she was at school. Get one ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... admitted doubtfully. "On the other hand, don't let's run any risk. I should hate to find an affinity, and all that sort of thing, after marriage—divorce in these days is such shocking bad form. Besides, honestly, Nigel, I don't feel frivolous enough to think about marriage just now. I have the feeling that even while the clock is ticking we are moving on to terrible things. I can't tell you quite what it is. I carried my ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he said, "I am doing what I can. I have written to the proprietaries and to the government at home. I have told them that the conduct of the Assembly is to me shocking beyond parallel. I am asking for fresh powers to deal with this horrible crisis. But I cannot look for an answer for long; and meantime are all our helpless settlers in the west to be butchered? You men of the ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and is quite rapidly become a nuisance. Men are making songs and plays and lectures for art's sake, for the praise of a coterie or to shock the bourgeois—above all shock the bourgeois. A certain type of artist delights in shocking the bourgeois—a riot over a play gives him great satisfaction. In passing, one must note with exasperation, perhaps with some misgiving, how men raise a riot over something not worth a thought, ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... upon male patients exposure of the body is inevitable, and demonstrations must be made which are unfitted for the observation of students of the opposite sex. These expositions, when made under the eye of such a conjoined assemblage, are shocking to the sense of decency, and entail the risk of unmanning the surgeon—of distracting his mind, and endangering the life of his patient. Besides this, a large class of surgical diseases of the male is of so delicate a nature as altogether to forbid inspection by female students. Yet a complete ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... trudged back to the lower halls, defeated but none the less impressed by our failure to devastate our stronghold, I was struck by the awful barrenness of the surroundings. There suddenly came over me the shocking realisation: the "contents" of the castle, as set forth rather vaguely in the bill of sale, were not what I had been led to consider them. It had not occurred to me at the time of the transaction to insist upon an inventory, and I had been too ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... patriarch Caramuru: as to the spiritual, it was indeed time that some rule of faith and morals should find its way to Brazil. The settlers had hitherto had no instructors but friars, whose manners were as dissolute as their own, and who encouraged in them a licentious depravity, scarcely less shocking than the cannibalism of the savages. These latter are said to have eaten the children born by their own daughters to their prisoners of war,—a thing so unnatural, that it only gains credit because the Portuguese sold as slaves even their own children by the native women. The apostle ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... haven't seen you since last night. What a shocking affair this is about old Mackwayte, isn't it? Are there ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... blows, and that barbarous severity which seems to regard the Compelle intrare as the principal law and object of instruction. How proceed, in such a state of things, to conceive a plan of liberal, gentle, and reasonable education? Rabelais, in his book, had begun by avoiding the danger of directly shocking received ideas; by transporting both himself and his heroes to the regions of imagination and extravagance he had set himself at liberty to bring them up in quite a different fashion than that of his times; the rectors of colleges could not pretend that Pantagruel, who was hardly ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... not, and has other means of earning income which, though not disloyal, are lowering to the status of a chief justice? And not the chief justice alone. I have seen French officers entertained at Government House who were guilty of shocking inhumanities and cruelties. The governor, Lord Mallow, is much to blame. On him lies the responsibility; to him must go the discredit. For myself, I feel his enmity on every hand. I suffer from his suggestions; I am the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... time he saw the shocking thinness of the little face, made into a wolf's face by hunger; the mingled horror and desperation of the eyes; the big man would not have believed a child's face could express emotions of such magnitude. ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... This shocking discovery diverted his thoughts for a short time from his original project; but, having done all he could for the poor wretches, he was glad to turn anew to the question of the raft. To a man accustomed as he was to the quick devising of expedients it was not difficult to scheme out the plan ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood |
