"Abominable" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "The abominable injustice of my parents was of a piece with the whole system I complain of. You will observe that we were punished, not for disobedience, but for riding in a milk-cart, and not so much for being in it as ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... wicked arts upon the lives of innocent men, and drawing others by magical potions (philtra et pharmaca) to commit misdemeanours. They are further charged with disturbing the elements, raising tempests, and practising abominable arts. The Council of Laodicea (343-381. Can. 36) condemned them. The Council of Ancyra forbade the use of medicine to work mischief. St. Basil's canons condemned witchcraft. The fourth Council of Carthage censured enchantment.[26] John of Salisbury tells of their ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... said, "I suppose you'll be writing to the old gentleman, and do please take my part. I can't go back to that abominable Brummem; if I do, I shall only run away again, and go ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... solitary, and picturesque places, which have fostered the soul of poetry in so many of our noble spirits. I quite envy thy residence in so bold and beautiful a region, where the eye and the foot may wander, without being continually offended and obstructed by monotonous hedge-rows, and abominable factories. If thou couldst give, from the ample stores of thy observant mind, a slight sketch or two of anything characteristic of the seasons, in mountainous scenery especially, I shall regard them as apples ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... have done very well in it, in portrait-painting especially. Look here, and here, and here!" said Ridley, producing fine vigorous sketches of Clive's. "He had the art of seizing the likeness, and of making all his people look like gentlemen, too. He was improving every day, when this abominable bank came in the ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are grown wiser than our fathers. Passing, therefore, from the Constitutional consideration to the mere policy, does not this letter imply that the idea of taxing America for the purpose of revenue is an abominable project, when the ministry suppose none but factious men, and with seditious views, could charge them with it? does not this letter adopt and sanctify the American distinction of taxing for a revenue? does it not formally reject ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... action; and we must not gratify ourselves in opposition to the will of God, or the interest of our fellow-beings. Every action must be brought to this test. Here is heart-work and life-work. Self must be denied in all our spiritual feelings, and in all our devotions, or they will be abominable in the sight of God. Here is work for self-examination. Every exercise of our minds should be tried by this standard. Again; we must deny self in all our conduct. And here we have the examples of many holy men, recorded in Scripture, with a host of martyrs ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... the hat, to which the community cling with a pertinacity that would be extraordinary, were it not common. Even the Parsee representative of "Young Bombay," dressed from top to toe in European costume, including a pair of shiny boots, cannot be induced to discard the abominable topee, or hat, distinctive of his race; though, perhaps, after all, we who live in glass houses should not throw stones; for what can be more hideous than the chimney-pot hat of our boasted civilization? ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... in examining papers. Many of these he read and restored to their places, but some he put aside, in order to take them with him. Of the new steward he took no notice whatever. He considered the dismissal of the old one and the appointment of Gualtier one of those abominable acts which were consistent with all the other acts of that woman whom he supposed to be his wife. Besides, the papers which he sought had reference to the past, and had no connection with the affairs of the present. In the intervals of his occupation ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... Cornwall, he came up to London, and worked as a coal-heaver for a little while, but soon became what is called a mud-lark; that is, a plunderer of the ships' cargoes that unload in the Thames. He plied this abominable trade for some time, drinking every day to the value of what he stole, till, in a quarrel at an ale-house about the division of some articles to be sold to a receiver of stolen goods, he struck ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... arguing about Christianity; "at least," says one, "you will not deny that its influence has been good." "I don't deny that," says the other. Then Sanin remarks quietly, "But I deny it!" and he adds, with a calmness provoking to the two disputants, "Christianity has played an abominable role in history, and the name of Jesus Christ will for some time yet ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... calling for me! Don't you see that it is the gallery? Don't you see the smiles of derision upon the faces of the press and the public in the first rows of seats? I tell you the play is bad, abominable and rotten! Wait and see what they will write about ...
— The Comedienne • Wladyslaw Reymont
... and Lubeck is only about thirty miles, yet it occupied Borrow thirteen hours, so abominable was the road, which "was paved at intervals with huge masses of unhewn rock, and over this pavement the carriage was very prudently driven at a snail's pace; for, had anything approaching speed been attempted, the entire demolition of the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Gorgons instead of hair—or of having their heads bitten off by their ugly tusks—or of being torn all to pieces by their brazen claws. Well, to be sure, these were some of the dangers, but by no means the greatest nor the most difficult to avoid. For the worst thing about these abominable Gorgons was that if once a poor mortal fixed his eyes full upon one of their faces, he was certain that very instant to be changed from warm flesh and blood into ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... the cell when lo! and behold! three sacred geese which were accustomed, I suppose, to demand their feed from the old woman at midday, made a rush at me and, surrounding me, made me nervous with their abominable rabid cackling. One tore at my tunic, another undid the lacings of my sandals and tugged at them, but one in particular, the ringleader and moving spirit of this savage attack, did not hesitate to worry at my leg with his serrated bill. Unable ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... puzzled, half knowing look. She recalled the admiration inspired in a certain little boy by a certain abominable top hat that a certain doctor had once worn to a certain annual meeting of the State Medical Society. But this was ...
— A Melody in Silver • Keene Abbott
... his rooms here?" he asked, trying to speak casually; but his soul was up in arms against the bare idea of this girl's entering that perfumed place where abominable and vile things were, and none of them so vile as the man she trusted, whom ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... duty. To hold aloof is not to display a superior form of Christianity; it is to be an apostate. As Solovyof has impressively shown in his notable conversations on War and Christianity, pacificism under present conditions is that very sort of religious imposture with which is associated the abominable ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... German accent referred me to a gorgeous head porter, who directed me to a princely young man behind a counter of brass and polish, like a bank—like several banks. This young man, while he answered me, kept his eye on my collar and tie—and I knew that they were abominable. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... What an abominable thing! Why, the grass would all be trampled down; and these dirty people, these slum folk, who seem to spring out of the earth when anything of a disagreeable or shameful nature is taking place,—a fire, for instance, or a brawl,—might easily bring infectious ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... is to say, the breaking up of families and selling them separately, is horrible and abominable. If an estate were sold together with all the slaves upon it, there would be no more hardship in the matter than there is when an estate changes hands in England, and the laborers upon it work for the ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... heartbrokenly from her presence for ever. She had done that twice already—once about going to the opera instead of listening to a lecture on Indian ethnology and once about a week-end in Kent.... He hated hurting his mother, and he was beginning to know now how easily she was hurt. It is an abominable thing to hurt one's mother—whether one has a justification or ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... following day I found myself compelled to go on some routine duty cross the river to Point Levy. The weather was the most abominable of that abominable season. It was winter, and yet not Winter's self. The old gentleman had lost all that bright and hilarious nature; all that sparkling and exciting stimulus which he owns and holds here so joyously in January, February, and even March. He was decrepit, yet spiteful; ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... "It is abominable that I should be kept waiting so long for my dinner. I have had my first course and here I have been waiting ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... had not been in prison all these years, he must have had misery far worse, for neither vice nor poverty alone could so shatter a human being. The son's pity seemed to look down from a great height upon the contemptible figure with the beautiful white hair and the abominable mouth. This compassion kept him from becoming hard, but it would also preserve him to hourly sacrifice—Prometheus chained to his rock. In the short fortnight that had gone since the day upon the Ecrehos, he had changed as much as do most people in ten ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... think not, Mr. Prendergast," she said indignantly. "I am not going to rob my cousin of what he has always been taught to think as his inheritance. It is abominable, I call ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... flowed, and rolled, and never rested. The houses, too, were so drunk as to be dangerous. They bowed over him, swaying hideously from their foundations. They seemed to be attracted, just as he was, by that abominable slimy flow and glister of the asphalt. Another wriggle of the latch-key, and they would be over on the ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... the station to new Merv is not great. But what an abominable dust! The commercial town is built on the left of the river—a town in the American style, which would please Ephrinell, wide streets straight as a line crossing at right angles; straight boulevards with rows of trees; much bustle and movement among the merchants ...
— The Adventures of a Special Correspondent • Jules Verne
... Massachusetts. Morton's settlement fell within Endicott's jurisdiction, and he resolved to finish the work which the Plymouth people began. So, about three months after the first visit, Endicott, with a small party, crossed the bay, hewed down the abominable May-pole, and, solemnly dubbing the place Mount Dago, in memory of the Philistine idol which fell down before the ark of the Lord, "admonished Morton's men to look ...
— England in America, 1580-1652 • Lyon Gardiner Tyler
... 'That abominable habit of drinking!' added Mr. Whiston austerely. He himself had quaffed water, as always. 'Their ale, indeed! See the ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... going to the island of Mindanao. Many were killed, and the few who escaped were wounded and injured. The second point is that, in addition to what has been said about this nation, they have unchaste, shameless, and abominable ways of life and customs. Besides having enough proof and experience to be able to say this, I certify to the truth of having heard this from a religious—a man very zealous in the service of our Lord and a minister who has charge of the Sangleys ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume IX, 1593-1597 • E. H. Blair
... name: "Whereas certain ill-disposed persons, under the mask of a pious zeal, but in reality under the impulse of avarice and ambition, have by their evil counsels persuaded our most gracious sovereign the king to introduce into these countries the abominable tribunal of the Inquisition, a tribunal diametrically opposed to all laws, human and divine, and in cruelty far surpassing the barbarous institutions of heathenism; which raises the inquisitors above every other power, and debases man ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... execution of the law. When we deal with lynching even mote is necessary. A great many white men are lynched, but the crime is peculiarly frequent in respect to black men. The greatest existing cause of lynching is the perpetration, especially by black men, of the hideous crime of rape—the most abominable in all the category of crimes, even worse than murder. Mobs frequently avenge the commission of this crime by themselves torturing to death the man committing it; thus avenging in bestial fashion a bestial deed, and reducing themselves to a ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... I offered her my hand, and in another moment we stood together in the noisome precincts of that abominable spot, with whose doleful story she had just made ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... transferred to Liverpool Street. That was true, for I saw at Liverpool Street several girls I had known previously at the 'Gaiety.' Those poor bar girls, how pitiful they look! all over London they stand behind their bars! Breathing for hours tobacco smoke, fumes of whisky and beer, listening to abominable jokes, the subjects of hideous flirtations; and then the little comedy, the effort to appear as virtuous young ladies—'young ladies of the bar.' It is very pitiful. In such circumstances how do you expect a girl to keep straight? ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... an abominable lot of noise about it, for the tree creaked, and our clothing tore on the thorny projections of limbs that seemed to have grown there since we climbed. To make matters worse, I stepped off the lowest branch, imagining there was another branch ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... done!—and pluck up a heart, and continue ag'n and ag'n. And don't say 'most g't tho'ts are dressed in shrouds': many, many are the Phoebus Apollo celestial arrows you still have to shoot into the foul Pythons, and poisonous abominable Megatheriums and Plesiosaurians that go staggering ab't, large as cathedrals, in our sunk ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... England, of which country, comparatively speaking, they reign the sovereigns. The age has improved so much in humanity, that even the poor Irish have experienced its influence, and are every day treated better and better; but still the remnant of the old manners, the abominable distinction of religion, united with the oppressive conduct of the little country gentlemen, or rather vermin of the kingdom, who never were out of it, altogether bear still very heavy on the poor people, and subject them ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... so great a source of profit. Every naval officer in His Majesty's service knows, that if we were to have thirty sail of the line continually off the coast of Guinea, it would not be sufficient to annihilate this abominable traffic, or to deter people from embarking in a trade that yields such extraordinary profits. This being admitted, as it certainly will be by every intelligent man, it follows, that the system now in operation by the British government for the abolition of the slave-trade, ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... remember that one day, as I was sitting in a neighbour's house, and there very sad at the consideration of my many blasphemies; and as I was saying in my mind, What ground have I to say that, who have been so vile and abominable, should ever inherit eternal life? That word came suddenly upon me, What shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? Rom. viii. 31. That also was an help unto me, Because I live, ye shall live also. John xiv. 19. But these words were but hints, touches, ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan
... qualities of a leader, whether in the cause of freedom or of his own dynastic interests, after the murder. He escaped as soon as he was able, as secretly as he could manage, leaving the city in confusion, and exposing himself to the obvious charge of abominable treason. So far as the Florentines knew, his assassination of their Duke was but a piece of private spite, executed with infernal craft. It is true that when he seized the pen in exile, he did his best to claim the guerdon of a patriot, and to throw the blame of failure on the Florentines. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... previous to 1888, Paul Rosen, a Sovereign Grand Inspector-General of the 33rd and last degree of the French rite, had come to the conclusion that the mysteries of Freemasonry are abominable, and in that year he published a work, entitled "Satan and Co.," suggesting that in this case a witness to the desired point had at last come forward, and, as a matter of fact, the writer does take us a few paces beyond ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... Delving further in this most holy of revelations, he learns that God is represented in a manner most unworthy of what such a being should be represented. He finds the Lord walking in the cool of the evening, showing his hind quarters to Moses, ordering abominable massacres, and punishing chiefs who had not killed enough people. On further perusal, there is revealed, "A great deal of Oriental bombast, incoherence and absurdity, that the marvels recounted are often ludicrous ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... So abominable an act has excited here extreme abhorrence and execration, and all you have already done has elevated the character of our country ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... thou can'st C, Mind what I have to say to thee, Thy Strumpet Wh—re abominable, Which thou didst kiss upon a Table, Has made thy manly ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany. Part 1 • Samuel Johnson [AKA Hurlo Thrumbo]
... that of all the impositions he had had in the course of his chequered career, none had been more abominable and wearisome than this. Oh, how he got to detest that governess and her ward, and how sickening their talk became before ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... for example, may, from rooted prejudice, have believed him guilty. No less than his most malignant and unscrupulous foes they resented furiously their inability to demonstrate it. They regarded it as evidence merely of his abominable craft. The ordinary and extraordinary laxity of his confinement indicated their doubt of his fair liability to any. The intervals of rigour were meant to notify to the sceptical that the Government was at last on the track of evidence which ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... the step-ladder for me, I will. This shocking old chimney, this abominable old-fashioned old chimney's mantels are so high, ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... of it! jumping over my bedding-out plants, and breaking my cucumber frames. Abominable ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... family, who knew her, could treat her in this abominable way, when she had committed no fault except the very human one of desiring to be the arbiter of her own fate, she surely owed no further obedience to them. So she waited calmly for ...
— The Point of View • Elinor Glyn
... rid of the sense that he was handling tainted money, and he was eager even to beggar himself to secure freedom from the load which lay upon his mind. 'I wish you to understand, Major de Blacquaire,' he said, 'that I am pressing this matter for reasons personal to myself. I am placed in a most abominable and unbearable position. I have unwittingly been made a partner in a very shameful transaction, and I may tell you that I have not the faintest doubt in my own mind as to the justice of your cause. I do not feel that as a man of honour I am justified ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... scientific battlefields. It consists of general denunciation; and in 1631 Father Melchior Inchofer, of the Jesuits, brought his artillery to bear upon Galileo with this declaration: "The opinion of the earth's motion is of all heresies the most abominable, the most pernicious, the most scandalous; the immovability of the earth is thrice sacred; argument against the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, and the incarnation, should be tolerated sooner than an argument to prove that the earth moves." From ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... themselves and let themselves go. And the Roofers, who worshiped Lily, in spite of her abominable tricks, raised their glasses to her health, crowded round her, smiled merrily at her with their white teeth, congratulated her for sending that ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... in Bulgaria whose name I have forgotten we disembarked and became escort to a caravan of miscellaneous stores, proceeding by forced marches over an abominable road. And after I forget how many days and nights we reached a railway and were once more packed into a train. Throughout that march, although we traversed wild country where any or all of us might easily have deserted among the mountains, Ranjoor Singh seemed so well to understand our ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... little, she kept her eyes fixed steadily on his—oh, in the drollest fashion, with a gaze that seemed to say "How admirably you do it! I wonder whether you imagine I believe you. Oh, you fibber! Aren't you ashamed to tell me such abominable fibs—?" ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... belongs to the Quixotic class, as Germany seems to emerge with him from her youthful and cranky nebulosity, you will not even have the pleasure of being thrashed in the company of your Master: no, you will be thrashed all alone, which is an abominable thing for any right-minded human being. "Solamen miseris ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... smallest indication of a break-down. The area of Germany, Austria, and Hungary taken as a whole is self-supporting with regard to foodstuffs. The English scheme of starving us is quite as silly as it is abominable. England can, of course, inflict severe losses on our manufacturers by closing the seas against their imports and exports; but this is not a matter of life and death, such as the first reprisals of Germany, if ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the younger man had utterly lacked. On the first day of the meeting he made a speech asking for the elimination, from a report which had been submitted, of a passage condemning the Interstate Commerce Law. The house was against him almost to a man, for the cattlemen considered the law an abominable infringement ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... causeway with the cliff, which is equally remarkable, showing a central boss of stone with lines radiating quaquaversally. There are outer steps and an inner flight leading under a blind archway, the latter supplied with a crane. The landing in the levadia, or surf, is abominable and a life-boat waits accidents outside. It works with the heavy Madeiran oars, square near the grip and provided with a board into whose hole the pin fits. The townlet, capital of the 'comarca,' fronted by its little Alameda and a strip of beach upon which I should prefer to debark, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... starve to death: good food is unprocurable save at prohibitive prices. One sleeps practically in the open, save for such rude shelter as each man can make for himself. The flies are a pest and constant source of danger. The water is abominable." ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... Fens, Bogs, Dens, and shades of death, A Universe of death, which God by curse Created evil, for evil only good, Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds, Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, Abominable, inutterable, and worse Then Fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd, Gorgons and Hydra's, and Chimera's dire. Mean while the Adversary of God and Man, Satan with thoughts inflam'd of highest design, 630 Puts on swift wings, and toward the Gates of Hell Explores his solitary flight; ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... or on foot, I shall sail with it. I am weary of trees, and rocks, and water. I desire to see the cobbles of Rochelle and Perigny before I die. Have you no canary in this abominable land?" ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... me his mother wore a cow's tail down to her heels (that and a girdle to which the tail is fastened, and a tiny leathern apron in front, constituted her whole wardrobe), and that she beat him well when he told lies or stole his neighbours eggs.' Poor woman; I wish this abominable slave trade had spared her and her boy. What folly it is to stop the Circassian slave trade, if it is stopped, and to leave this. The Circassians take their own children to market, as a way of providing for them handsomely, and both boys and ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... this meant to me? Can you understand this monstrous punishment, this slow perpetual laceration of a mother's heart, this abominable, endless waiting? Endless, did I say? No: it is about to end, for I am dying. I am dying without ever again seeing either of them—either one or ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... British merchants had received no redress for the depredations committed by the Spaniards; that the commerce of England daily decreased; that no sort of trade throve but the traffic of Change-alley, where the most abominable frauds were practised; and that every session of parliament opened a new ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... been, as you heard from the K——, a general quarrel between the K——, Duke of York, Lord Liverpool, and the Duke of Gloucester, none of them now speaking to the latter. He has acted like an obstinate ——. What an abominable thing it is the King not going ashore, and not showing himself to any of his subjects! His conduct is an excitement to popular hatred. What can it mean? Lord King is here, and appears to me to chuckle quite at the thoughts of what is likely to happen. I fancy a ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... ugly tusks,—or of being torn all to pieces by their brazen claws. Well, to be sure, these were some of the dangers, but by no means the greatest, nor the most difficult to avoid. For the worst thing about these abominable Gorgons was, that, if once a poor mortal fixed his eyes full upon one of their faces, he was certain, that very instant, to be changed from warm flesh and blood into cold ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... She also laboured under the impression that she was truly religious, listening weekly to the sermons of fashionable preachers on the convenient text that "worldliness is next to godliness" and entertaining prejudices, finely unqualified by accurate knowledge, against the abominable ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... had the abominable impudence to introduce a bill relieving the disabilities of a few friends of his in Kentucky. Mr. CAMERON objected upon the ground that one of these persons was named SMITH, and used to be a New York Street Commissioner. Any ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various
... III. against the invading Saracens, was waged with redoubled ardor on the sudden appearance of the star with the flaming tail. Mahomet II. took Constantinople by storm, and raised the siege of Belgrade. But the Pope having put aside both the curse of the comet, and the abominable designs of the Mussulmans, the Christians gained the battle, and vanquished their enemies in a bloody fight. The Angelus to the sound of bells dates from these ordinances of Calixtus III. referring to ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... abominable thing to have done, he told himself—abominable; and yet, as he read the skilfully penned words, his vain man's heart beat a little faster at the knowledge that she still loved him, this woman who had thrown him over so heartlessly; she still loved him, though ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... with a melancholy interest. In vain he endeavored to explain to himself the cause of his being treated with such unparalleled severity. He could not recall any crime such as might excuse his incarceration in such an abominable place. He buried his face in his hands. He thought of Marguerite and the clock, and then, happily for him, he wept, as the young alone can weep when they are in sorrow, and when their ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... the brickbats. No kiddin'—where is your Editor's pride? We want a magazine to be proud of, don't we? Its binding is abominable. The edges are terrible: it takes ten minutes to find a certain page. The paper itself is absolutely rotten. What about the poor readers who want to have a Science Fiction library? He wants a magazine that can be bound and will look half good. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... are to have fireworks; which will be no less rural. I was in a splenetic humour, and indulged myself in an exclamation against such an abominable waste of gunpowder; for which I got reproved by my angelic monitress, who told me that, of all its uses and abuses, this was ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... surely betokens your own self, its golden wings signifying the countries you have won with your sword, and its marvelous tail the knights of the Round Table. As for the boar that was slain, that may betoken either a tyrant that torments his people, or some hideous and abominable giant with whom you are about to fight. And the dream foreshadows victory for you. Therefore, though it was very dreadful, you should take comfort from it and be of a ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... Master Dion," began Niobe, for the sixth time, "if only some philtre could make Procles loath that abominable Jocasta!" ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... to Rome: what a Rome! the fortieth day of rain, and damp, and abominable reeking odors, such as blessed cities swept by the sea-breeze—bitter sometimes, yet indeed a friend—never know. It has been dark all day, though the lamp has only been lit half an hour. The music of the day has been, first the atrocious arias, which last in the Corso till near noon, though ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... sketchbooks showing that he traveled as far as Corfu, and subsequently, when he settled for life as the vicar of Dartington parish, he was regarded as one of the most enlightened country gentlemen of the district, active in improving the roads, which, till his time, were abominable, and in bringing poachers to punishment ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... respectable in the hands of the purchaser?. . . Every privilege, in its nature, is unjust, odious, and against the social compact. The blood boils at the thought of its ever having been possible to legally consecrate down to the eighteenth century the abominable fruits of an abominable feudal system. . . . The caste of nobles is really a population apart, a fraudulent population, however, which, for lack of serviceable faculties, and unable to exist alone, fastens itself upon a living nation, like ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... in which the retailers of these abominable licenses described their advantages to the purchasers, and the arguments with which they urged the necessity of obtaining them, were so extravagant that they appear almost incredible. "If any man," said ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... whose profession it was to pretend to believe in all manner of vital truths which in their inner practice they rejected; thus, asserting themselves to be certain other and hateful butterflies which no bird will eat by reason of their abominable smell, these cunning ones conceal their own sweetness, and live long in the land and see good days. No: lying is so deeply rooted in nature that we may expel it with a fork, and yet it will always come back again: it is like the poor, we must have it always with us. ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... any life can be written, that life must be lived; so that it is not my life that I am now writing. Attacked in early youth by an abominable moral malady, I here narrate what happened to me during the space of three years. Were I the only victim of that disease, I would say nothing, but as many others suffer from the same evil, I write for them, although I am not sure that they will ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... jocular lads, and alleys suggestive of crime. All and everything that is city fell violently upon his mind, jarring it, and flashing over his brow all the horror of delirium. His pace quickened, and he longed for wings to rise out of the abominable labyrinth. ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... not missed the adventurer's slight crouch in preparation for a shove which might have toppled the case and ended the abominable servitude of its gruesome tenants. The Hawk was caught before he had well started; and had he not stopped his gathering muscles he would have been dead from the coolie-guards' rays by the time he touched the ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... you again that the recollection of the manner in which I saw the queen of France in 1774, and the contrast between that brilliancy, splendour and beauty, with the prostrate homage of a nation to her, and the abominable scene of 1780 which I was describing, did draw tears from me and wetted my paper. These tears came again into my eyes almost as often as I looked at the description,—they may again. You do not believe this fact, nor that these are my real feelings; ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the play-city, the scrawny acres that ended in the hard black line of the lake, the vast blocks of open land to the south, which would go to make some new subdivision of the sprawling city. Absorbed, charmed, grimly content with the abominable desolation of it all, he stood and gazed. No evidence of any plan, of any continuity in building, appeared upon the waste: mere sporadic eruptions of dwellings, mere heaps of brick and mortar dumped at random over the cheerless soil. Above swam the marvellous clarified atmosphere ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... bottles are various acids—vinegar, sulphuric acid, nitric acid, and others. The acidity of this vinegar is very weak. Your wine is only some abominable acid thing. This great eminence is not a natural mountain. The height of that mountain is not ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... dances were accompanied by kisses and embraces. Playing cards, cursing and swearing were also dealt with, as indeed they were elsewhere. Among the odd matters that came before the Consistory were: attempted suicide, possessing the Golden Legend (a collection of saints' lives called by Beza "abominable trash"), paying for masses, betrothing a daughter to a Catholic, fasting on Good Friday, singing obscene songs, and drunkenness. A woman was chastized for taking too much wine even though it did not intoxicate. Some husbands ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... make up for it by guesses and conjectures, founded upon some little tubercle upon a tooth! Notwithstanding their learned treatises, it often proves—and very often too—that these tubercles tell most abominable stories; in plainer terms, that the ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... it with full and perfect knowledge of the facts, that it was the dishonest policy of Mr Dillon, Mr T.P. O'Connor and the men who, blindly and weakly, and with an abominable lack of moral courage, followed their leadership, which has kept one hundred thousand tenants still under the heel of landlordism in Ireland. These men, in driving a nail into the policy of Conciliation, drove a nail ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... on the electric light. The philosophers were revealed with unpleasing suddenness. "My goodness, a tea-party! Oh really, Rickie, you are too bad! I say again: wicked, abominable, intolerable boy! I'll have you horsewhipped. If you please"—she turned to the symposium, which had now risen to its feet "If you please, he asks me and my brother for the week-end. We accept. At the ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... that the Avenging Fiends Devise for villains! On all other Greeks May they bring murderous battle, woeful griefs, And chiefly on Agamemnon, Atreus' son! Not scatheless to the home may he return So long desired! But why should I consort, I, a brave man, with the abominable? Perish the Argive host, perish my life, Now unendurable! The brave no more Hath his due guerdon, but the baser sort Are honoured most and loved, as this Odysseus Hath worship mid the Greeks: but utterly Have they forgotten me and all ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... scattered them throughout the dominions of the Prussian dynasty; they are a source everywhere of increasing danger and ill-will. They grow largely in representative power. They compel the government to abominable barbarities which are already arousing the mind of Europe. They will in the near future prove the ruin of that family to which was originally due the partition ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... of the sepulchres of the righteous, is nothing at all in God's eyes, but things that manifest that thou art an hypocrite and blind, because thou takest no notice of that which is within, which yet is that which is most abominable to God. For the fruit, alas! what is the fruit of the tree, or what are the streams of the fountain? Thy fountain is defiled; yea, a defiler, and so that which maketh the whole self, with thy works, ...
— The Pharisee And The Publican • John Bunyan
... blessed Saviour!" Howbeit, when my dear gossip, who stood behind her, saw that her little hands, and more especially her nails, had turned black and blue, he spoke for her to the worshipful court, whereupon the abominable sheriff only said, "Oh, let her be; let her feel what it is to fall off from the living God." But Dom. Consul was more merciful, inasmuch as, after feeling the cords, he bade the constable bind her hands less cruelly and slacken the rope a little, which accordingly he was ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... lingered, making the whole place horrible to his eye and one to be shunned by all men. How long it had been shunned by him he realised when he noticed the increased decay of the walls and the growth of the verdure encompassing the abominable place! ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... you, lest I should forget it, the letter to the Peschiere agent. He is the Marquis Pallavicini's man of business, and speaks the most abominable Genoese ever heard. He is a rascal of course; but a more reliable villain, in his way, than the rest ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens
... filthy, squalid, dirty, polluted; scurrilous, abusive, obscene, insulting, blasphemous, vituperative, vulgar; shameful, detestable, odious, abominable, loathsome, disgusting, repulsive, offensive; unpropitious, unfavorable; feculent, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... and, taking the gaff with me, I went sulkily up the river, and again taking to the water, made my way to the head of the gravel-bank, over which I walked slowly, oppressed in spirit, and weighed down by those abominable boots which had once more filled to overflowing! Water-proof boots are worse than useless for this sort of work. But happily this is not the usual style of thing that one experiences in Norwegian fishing. It is only occasionally that ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... tried for murder, and hung. He was first taken to the church, where a sermon was preached from the text 'Oh, do not this abominable thing which I hate.' ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... worst of the abominable dogkennels called houses was the group known as the Cite des Kroumirs, in the 13th arrondissement, which, by a strange irony, was built on land belonging to the Department of Public Assistance, which was let out by that body to a rich ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... just outside the Club, and had saved himself by taking to his heels. The laughter over this made the last gentleman forget what he was saying; which gave opportunity to a fifth gentleman to rise and discourse at some length on the sophistical and abominable character of Mr. Milton's ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... control, in habits of vice, idleness, poverty, debt, and destitution. Thieving was general." With such conditions existing in a model factory, under a master whose benevolence was celebrated everywhere, it can be very readily believed that conditions elsewhere must have been abominable. ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... learnt from every one that it was no religious compulsion, but hatred, revenge, or desire of gain, which led to these acts. These stranglers are represented as possessing a most extraordinary dexterity in their abominable trade, united with the most untiring patience and perseverance; they frequently follow the victims they have selected for months, and strangle them either while sleeping, or by stealing behind them and throwing a twisted cloth or ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... almost as hateful to Shirley as was the abominable dusting, but she kept her temper-the lesson seemed ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... Palace, where I had the honour of walking a polonaise with no other than the Margravine of Bayreuth, old Fritz's own sister: old Fritz's, whose hateful blue-baize livery I had worn, whose belts I had pipeclayed, and whose abominable rations of small beer and sauerkraut I had swallowed ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... are prevalent throughout the country, but throat affections are by far more common among business men. Every unfortunate one mutters something about the abominable weather and curses the piercing wind. Much of the trouble, however, is caused by overheated rooms, and a little more attention to proper ventilation would remove the cause of suffering. Doctor J. Ewing Mears, who was thus afflicted, said to an inquirer: "The huskiness ...
— The Handy Cyclopedia of Things Worth Knowing - A Manual of Ready Reference • Joseph Triemens
... Lapham spent it; his wife spent on rich and rather ugly clothes and a luxury of household appointments. Lapham had not yet reached the picture-buying stage of the rich man's development, but they decorated their house with the costliest and most abominable frescoes; they went upon journeys, and lavished upon cars and hotels; they gave with both hands to their church and to all the charities it brought them acquainted with; but they did not know how to spend on society. Up to a certain period ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... exist motives beyond a mere impulse to abominable proceedings in the man. He meditated, and swallowed ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... there—no account whatever of his peregrinations to the polar regions; and the notion of ascribing to him the story of the frozen words is preposterous. I have not in my library, but have read, the best edition of Sir John's Travels (I don't mean the abominable reprint), but I do not remember anything of the kind there. Indeed Sir John, like Marco Polo, was perfectly honest, though some of their informants ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... the cedar somehow brought it nearer. The fact that, all so ill-explained and formless, the thing yet lay in her consciousness, out of reach but moving and alive, filled her with a kind of puzzled, dreadful wonder. Its presence was so very real, its power so gripping, its partial concealment so abominable. Then, out of the dim confusion, she grasped one thought and saw it stand quite clear before her eyes. She found difficulty in clothing it in words, but its meaning perhaps was this: That cedar stood in their life for something friendly; its downfall ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... in our own time, and first suggested by John Taylor. 'Whereas other writers,' says Smyth, 'have generally esteemed that the mysterious persons who directed the building of the Great Pyramid (and to whom the Egyptians, in their traditions, and for ages afterwards, gave an immoral and even abominable character) must therefore have been very bad indeed, so that the world at large has always been fond of standing on, kicking, and insulting that dead lion, whom they really knew not; he, Mr. John Taylor, seeing how religiously bad the Egyptians themselves were, was ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... don't deserve to be asked," cried Lady Louisa, "you wicked creature you!-I must tell you one thing, Ma'am,-you can't think how abominable he was! do you know we met Mr. Lovel in his new phaeton, and my Lord was so cruel as to drive against it?-we really flew. I declare I could not breathe. Upon my word, my Lord, I'll never trust myself with you again,-I ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... me that the King and Court were never in the world so bad as they are now for gaming, swearing, whoring, and drinking, and the most abominable vices that ever were in the world; so that all must come to nought. He told me that Sir G. Carteret was at this end of the town; so I went to visit him in Broad Street; and there he and I together: and he is mightily pleased with my Lady Jem's having ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... inhabit the vast regions between the Upper Orinoco, the Rio Negro, the Inirida, and the Jupura, eat human flesh. The Daricavanas, the Puchirinavis, and the Manitivitanos, appeared to him to be the greatest cannibals among them. He believes that this abominable practice is with them the effect of a system of vengeance; they eat only enemies who are made prisoners in battle. The instances where, by a refinement of cruelty, the Indian eats his nearest relations, his wife, or an unfaithful mistress, are extremely rare. The strange custom ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... palaces and fair houses: they stray about in court and market, and that with bare and open face: as who say, they may not only lawfully do it, but ought also to be praised for so doing. What should we say any more of this? Their vicious and abominable life is now thoroughly known to the whole world. Bernard writeth roundly and truly of the Bishop of Rome's house, yea, and of the Bishop of Rome himself. "Thy palace," saith he, "taketh in good men, but it maketh ...
— The Apology of the Church of England • John Jewel
... you been drinking? Your language to me is abominable. Why I permit myself to remain here and ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... as long as I live, bottle or no bottle!" she said violently. "It is mean and cruel and abominable to lay it to Billy Farrington; and I will never believe he had anything to do with it till he says he had. I never thought you'd treat a guest in your own house like this, Papa McAlister. You can everyone of you go back on him, if you want. I intend to ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... account of it my reader must consult Stuart's report. Approaching the pillar from the south, the traveller must pass over a series of red sandhills, covered with some scrubs, and clothed near the ground with that abominable vegetable production, the so-called spinifex or porcupine grass—botanically, the Triodia, or Festuca irritans. The timber on the sandhills near the pillar is nearly all mulga, a very hard acacia, though a few tall and well-grown casuarinas—of a kind that ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Bacon, Lord Brougham entered public life a reformer and a patriot. The subject of his first successful speech in Parliament was the slave-trade. He denounced not only the abominable traffic itself,—the men who stole, bought, and kept the slave; but also the traders and merchants,—'the cowardly suborners of piracy and mercenary murder,' as he termed them, under whose remote influence the trade had been carried on; and the sympathies of the people went ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... dispute became terrible, they all three spoke at once, coming at last to abominable reproaches, with such outbursts, and such furious motion of the jaw, that they seemed to ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... darkened, perhaps, for five minutes or so, in order to give the exhibition full effect, the result would be, a fizz or two, a faint blue light, and a stink, varying according to circumstances, but always abominable. "It's very odd, John," the discomfited operator used to exclaim to his assistant; "very odd; and we succeeded so well this morning, too: it's most unaccountable: I'm really very sorry, gentlemen, but I can assure you, this very same experiment ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... doctrine, except when a new party or new measure is rising into prominence.] Our men brilliant, able, safe. Our opponents the opposite. [Public character only should be criticized. Gossip, scandal, slander are abominable, and seldom well received by any audience. Poison, the assassin's dagger, and the spreading of infamous stories do not belong ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... Domine Warnerus Hadson,(2) whom you had sent as preacher to the South River, died on the passage over. It is very necessary to supply his place, partly on account of the children who have not been baptized since the death of Domine Wely,(3) and partly on account of the abominable sentiments of various persons there, who speak very disrespectfully of ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • Various
... a poem of Thersites the buffoon or Sisyphus the whoremaster or Batrachus the bawd speaking or doing anything, so praise the artificial managery of the poet, adapting the expressions to the persons, as withal to look on the discourses and actions so expressed as odious and abominable. For the goodness of things themselves differs much from the goodness of the imitation of them; the goodness of the latter consisting only in propriety and aptness to represent the former. Whence to foul acts foul expressions are most suitable and proper. As the shoes of Demonides ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... others went for four or five pounds, and as for me—confound his impudence, threepence! And fine fun the audience had out of it! We did well to be angry; we have come from Hades; and we ask you to give us satisfaction for this abominable outrage. ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... such was the matter of M. du Chatelet's discourse. "The Court was less insolent that this pack of dolts in Angouleme. You were expected to endure deadly insults; the superciliousness you had to put up with was something abominable. If this kind of folk did not alter their behavior, there would be another Revolution of '89. As for himself, if he continued to go to the house, it was because he had found Mme. de Bargeton to his taste; she was the only woman worth troubling about ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... informed on the point. Have a care, Hugh. It seems to me you're going to step into a quarry hole, or over a precipice. How my old flesh quakes, to be sure! If it was only a fair flat field and open day, with any odds you like against me, it would be nothing; but this abominable Goat's—Hah! I knew it. Help! hold ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... occupy yourselves with the affairs of women. Had I not seen Bilhah bathe in a secluded spot, I had not fallen into the great sin I committed, for after my thoughts had once grasped the nakedness of woman, I could not sleep until I had accomplished the abominable deed. For when our father Jacob went to his father Isaac, while we sojourned in Eder, not far from Ephrath, which is Beth-lehem, Bilhah was drunken with wine, and she lay asleep, uncovered, in her bedchamber, and I entered in and ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... "I do not know how long the effect of that abominable water-weed may last," he said, "and I dare not leave you to walk alone. If you prefer it I can send you in a trap with my gardener, but I had rather ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... Commandments;—they will come in vain from the mouth of one who is even suspected to be so. To all this, when it was said to him by the Bishop in the kindest manner, Dr. Wortle replied that such suspicions were monstrous, unreasonable, and uncharitable. He declared that they originated with that abominable virago, Mrs. Stantiloup. "Look round the diocese," said the Bishop in reply to this, "and see if you can find a single clergyman acting in it, of the details of whose life for the last five years you know absolutely nothing." Thereupon the Doctor ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... he was touched with the candour and the noble simplicity of the prelate. "I never doubted his virtues," replied the King, "but I wish he would be quiet." This same Archbishop gave a pension of fifty louis a year to the greatest scoundrel in Paris. He is a poet, who writes abominable verses; this pension is granted on condition that his poems are never printed. I learned this fact from M. de Marigny, to whom he recited some of his horrible verses one evening, when he supped with him, in company with some people of quality. He chinked the money in his pocket. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... mode of life. All other souls are judged in the nether world after their first life, and there do penance for their guilt in different quarters; the incurable only are thrust down forever into Tartarus. He attaches eternal punishment to certain particularly abominable sins, while such as have lived justly repose blissfully in the dwelling of a kindred star until their entrance into a second life. Plato was clearly acquainted with the fact of the necessity of an intermediate state between eternal happiness and misery, ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier |
