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Distaste   /dɪstˈeɪst/   Listen
Distaste

noun
1.
A feeling of intense dislike.  Synonyms: antipathy, aversion.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Distaste" Quotes from Famous Books



... distaste. 'I warn you not to discourage my talking,' he said dejectedly. 'Believe me, men who don't talk are even worse to live with than men who do. O have a care of natures that are mute. I confess I'm shirking writing ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley

... An uncontrollable distaste for her family swept over Laura, and she felt that she could suffer no longer the authority of Mrs. Payne, the senility of Uncle Percival or the sorrows of Angela. As she looked at Mrs. Payne she was struck as if for the first time by ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... school well and some of the teachers, a look of discontent and unhappiness came over her face. She said that she had been very, very happy at Sherman. With a wave of her slender brown hand she said: "Look at this!" Her eyes rested with distaste on the flock of sheep grazing near, turned to the mud-daubed hogan behind us, and swept on across the cactus-studded desert. "They teach us to sleep in soft, white beds and to bathe in tile bathtubs. We eat white ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith

... used to think the days at old Browne's very long and tedious, and often enough feel a mortal hatred of Euclid as a tyrant who had invented geometry for the sake of driving boys mad. What distaste, too, we had for all the old Romans who had bequeathed their language to us; just as if English wasn't ten times better, Mercer ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn

... up Trimmins on the road to town. The lanky Southerner, who lived as a squatter with his ever-increasing family back in the woods, was a soft-spoken man with much innate politeness and a great distaste for regular work. He said the elder had just offered him a job in the woods that he was going to take if he could get a man ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long

... slept badly and he looked with distaste at the paw-paw and the eggs and bacon which were set before him. The mosquitoes had been maddening that night; they flew about the net under which he slept in such numbers that their humming, pitiless and menacing, had the effect of a note, infinitely drawn ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham

... occupation of the country was beginning to wear off, and in its place the sturdy independence so typical of the British character was reasserting itself. Deep down in his heart the genuine Englishman has a rugged distaste for seeing his country invaded by a foreign army. People were asking themselves by what right these aliens had overrun British soil. An ever-growing feeling of annoyance had begun to lay hold ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse

... doing anything, a sense of power and grasp of intellect which was combined with delicacy of feeling and sensitiveness to beauty, to skies and clouds and flowers. I seemed to be awakening to true manhood, to my true self. And at meals, it is worth recording, I commenced to have a distaste ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... was best,' said Stella quietly. And then, the woman having taken her departure, she sat down on the bed, a large double one, which filled up half the dingy room, and looked round the apartment and into the tiny sitting-room with distaste. ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin

... Gottfried, "but boy-sworn paladin, who talks of he knows not what. Speak knightly truth, Sir Baron, and own that this opposition is in verity from distaste to a stepfather's rule." ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Kalitin, who had a great distaste for the quiet of country life, "there would be no need for them to be dragging themselves off into the country." In her heart Marya Dmitrievna more than once regretted her pretty Pokrovskoe, with its babbling brook, its wide meadows, ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... here hold briefs on either side, and they say they are bound, in the interests of their clients, to master the intricacies of the game. I must say they have managed very successfully to subordinate their horror of gambling. RUSSELL, you know, has a positive distaste for any game of chance. But as he says, a Barrister must sometimes put his prejudices in his pocket. ASQUITH brings to the game a serious aspect that positively sanctifies it. As for EDWARD CLARKE, he's wonderfully nimble. He was trying la poucette just now when I called ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various

... distaste. Everything was not only cheap, but common and tawdry. Still, the dining-room, like all the other rooms in the chalet, was singularly clean, ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... to anticipate the clock; but her distaste for her surroundings, and the impatience to have done with the tedious duties awaiting her, had sent her downstairs before the rest of the party. Her life had been so free from tiresome obligations that she had but a small stock of patience to meet them with; and ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... imperfect, and drawn far from the Source. What way is there, then, to make the imperfect perfect? This way: to correct and chastise the movements of thy heart with true self-knowledge, and with hatred and distaste for thy imperfection, that thou art such a peasant as to give to the creature that love which ought to be given wholly to God, loving the creature without moderation, and God moderately. For love toward God should be without measure, and that for the creature should be measured by that for God, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa

... court which they paid to O'Connell and his followers in their agitation against the Irish Established Church. For some time previous to the sketch we are about to describe he had absented himself from the House, and otherwise shown his distaste for the persons and principles of the leading men of the party to which he had formerly belonged. The busy-bodies who professed to be the exponents of public opinion in Westminster, pressed him for an explicit statement of his views, and eventually called ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... customs, and, preferring expensive stuffs and jewels, turned from the loom, which Livia had wished to preserve as the emblem of womanhood. Many young men of the great families were beginning to show a distaste for the army, for the government of the state, for jurisprudence, for all those activities which had been the jealous privilege of the nobility of the past. One gave himself up to literary pursuits, another cultivated philosophy, another busied himself only with the increase of his inherited ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... boys waved their hands towards him with the same diffident and mysterious sympathy that left him hesitating between a smile and a frown. Then he proceeded on his way. Nevertheless, for no other reason than that he felt a sudden distaste to meeting any one, when he reached the point where the trail descended directly to the settlement, he turned into a longer and more solitary ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte

... shoulders together in a little shiver of distaste. "Oh, no, no," she shuddered, "this bowl is such a ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey

... what to do, nor what would be the end of the passionate love which he suddenly felt rise within him. He was seized with disgust for all these warlike habits and tastes, which had reduced him to the melancholy plight in which he found himself. His distaste for women was changed into love. He sent for his mother and related to her all that had occurred. "My son," she said, "all these circumstances should render Djaida still dearer to you. Wait patiently a little, until I have been able to go and ask her of her mother." She straightway mounted ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous

... that now was gone. When, unbidden, the well-known laugh rang again in his ears, or he felt on his hands the touch of the slender fingers, James turned away with a gesture of distaste. Now Mrs. Wallace brought him only bitterness, and he tortured himself insanely trying to forget her.... With tenfold force the sensation returned which had so terribly oppressed him before his illness; he felt that Nature had become intolerably monotonous; the circumscribed, ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... wonder that James Thomson, writing verses On the Death of His Mother, should disclaim the artificial aid of the muses, saying that his own deep feeling was enough to inspire him. As the romantic movement progressed, it would be easy to show that distaste for the eighteenth century mannerism resulted in more and more flippant treatment of the goddesses. Beattie refers to a contemporary's "reptile Muse, swollen from the sty." [Footnote: See On a Report of a Monument to a Late Author.] Burns alludes to ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins

... for amusement interfered with her studies somewhat more than the empress, prompted by Mercy, was willing to make allowance for, she profited much more willingly by her mother's advice, having indeed a natural inclination for the works of history and biography, and a decided distaste for novels and romances. She could not have had a better guide in such matters than De Vermond, who was a man of extensive information and of a very correct taste; and under his guidance and with his assistance she studied Sully's memoirs, Madame de Sevigne's letters, and any other books which ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... distinction of an aristocratic lineage. Reared in seclusion, she was familiar with the great world by report only. Though brilliant, even eloquent in conversation when her interest was roused, her early training had added to her natural distaste for the spirit, as well as the accessories, of a social life that was inevitably more or less artificial. She would have felt cramped and caged in the conventional atmosphere of a drawing room in which ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... haunted by an uneasy consciousness, that the argument which had prevailed with her was not the love of home or of her parents, which, indeed, might have been a very creditable motive for her decision, but a shrinking from trouble, a dislike to effort of any kind, and an utter distaste for obscurity and humility. Janetta's reproachful call rang in her ears for days. She knew that she had chosen the baser part. True, as she argued with herself, it was right to obey one's parents, to be submissive and straightforward, to shrink from the idea of ingratitude ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... lazily floating down the river, making ripples on the glassy opal surface of the water. They did not talk very much; Ellinor seemed disinclined for the exertion; and her lover was thinking over Mr. Wilkins's behaviour, with some surprise and distaste of the habit so evidently growing ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell

... something that was now poisoning that affection which had formerly been his delight, which was coming more and more between him and his wife every day, and which was giving him a distaste for home. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant

... son David, newly back from England and the study of metallurgy, and a Mr. Winscombe, come out to the Provinces in connection with the Maryland boundary dispute, accompanied by his wife. All this Howat Penny regarded with profound distaste; necessary social and conversational forms repelled him. And it annoyed his father when he sat, apparently morose, against the wall, or ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer

... desires that all his officers should be accustomed to society, and they receive orders to make afternoon visits, which they do—poor things—I suppose, much to their distaste. As no one knows them and they do not know any one, it must be very awkward for them. They come six at a time, leave a package of cards in the antechamber, present themselves, and each other. They ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone

... Chelsea upwards as far as Shepperton, where the narrower channel affords not half so noble a prospect, and where the continual succession of the small craft, like the frequent repetition of all things, which have nothing in them great, beautiful, or admirable, tire the eye, and give us distaste and aversion, instead of pleasure. With some of these situations, such as Barnes, Mortlake, etc., even the shore of Essex might contend, not upon very unequal terms; but on the Kentish borders there are many spots to be chosen by the builder which might justly claim ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding

... hurt 'im any ef I'd thicken that gruel up into mush. He's took sech a distaste to soft food sense he's got that ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart

... that since thy birth have run Would hardly style thee Nestor's youngest son. Then let me add what yet remains behind, A thought unfinish'd in that generous mind; Age bids me speak! nor shall the advice I bring Distaste the people, or ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... became fixed in a belief that there was hatred in Father Michel for John Montrose, and a distaste for the good father in the Duke of Borthwicke, such as a man might cherish against one whom ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane

... it. I gladly admit that woman is not too closely related to man. We don't like to kill things; it's an ingrained distaste, not merely a matter of ethical philosophy. You like to kill; and it's a trait common also to children and other predatory animals. Which fact," she added airily, "convinces ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... for the thoroughly sane and healthy, and for those who can detach themselves from tasks and drudgery long and often enough to get, at any rate once and again, a view of the proportions of life and of the stage and plot of its action. We speak often with amusement, sometimes with distaste and uneasiness, of men who "have no sense of humor," who take themselves too seriously, who are intense, self-absorbed, over-confident in matters of opinion, or else go plumed with conceit, proud of we cannot tell what, enjoying, appreciating, thinking of nothing so much as themselves. These ...
— When a Man Comes to Himself • Woodrow Wilson

... have spent much time in the study of the abstract sciences, but the paucity of persons with whom you can communicate on such subjects, gave me a distaste for them. When I began to study man, I saw that these abstract studies are not suited to him, and that in diving into them I wandered farther from my real object than those who were ignorant of them, ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch

... the fact—a fact it certainly is—that some readers, while acknowledging, of course, the immense power of Othello, and even admitting that it is dramatically perhaps Shakespeare's greatest triumph, still regard it with a certain distaste, or, at any rate, hardly allow it a place in their minds beside Hamlet, King ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... visitors, baffled by the two sets of Ghiberti doors always so firmly closed, are apt to overlook. All children born in Florence are still baptized here, and I watched one afternoon an old priest at the task, a tiny Florentine being brought in to receive the name of Tosca, which she did with less distaste than most, considering how thorough was his sprinkling. The Baptistery is rich in colour both without and within. The floor alone is a marvel of intricate inlaying, including the signs of the zodiac and a gnomic sentence which ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas

... appreciation of Blake's poetry. We can hardly say as much for Mr. Swinburne's essay. The exaggerated and fantastical epithets of praise, the involved and overloaded method of criticism, would have the effect upon most readers of creating a distaste in advance for the writings so heralded. The "Prefatory Memoir" prefixed by Mr. W. M. Rossetti to the most recent edition of the poems is of a different character, and may be commended to all readers who are about to make acquaintance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... It is a true saying of our ancient humanist that "the longer it continueth in a name or lineage, the more is nobility extolled and marvelled at." It is true because in this way our imagination is working with the great conservative law of growth. Whatever may be in theory our democratic distaste for the insignia of birth, we cannot get away from the fact that there is a certain honor of inheritance, and that we instinctively pay homage to one who represents a noble name. There is nothing really illogical ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... outcasts. Their poverty and the shifts to which poverty drives people had brought them the disrespect of one class; and as to the acquaintances and friends of their own rank, what had been mainly shown them had been a sort of cool distaste for their company, an insulting readiness to forget the existence of people who had so to speak lost their social bloom, and laid themselves open to the contemptuous disapproval or pity of the world. Everybody, it seemed, knew their affairs, ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... an alderman were to declare that he didn't like green fat, he would be looked upon as a social martyr, a Marcus Curtius of the dinner-table, who immolated himself for the benefit of his kind. His fellow-aldermen would believe in anything rather than an heretical distaste for the city ambrosia of the soup tureen. But there are people who dislike salmon, and white-bait, and spring ducklings, and all manner of old-established delicacies, and there are other people who affect eccentric and despicable ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon

... pursued by the city's more radical intelligentsia—little-theater premiers, private assemblings of shrewd, bored men and women, precious concerts, electric discussions of political unrest. From all such adventurings he came away with a sense of distaste. Friendships, always foreign to his nature, had become now almost an impossibility. He felt himself a procession of adjectives exploding in the ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... man flung back his shoulders with a jerk, as though overcoming his own feelings, and approached the body with evident distaste. His hands, slender as a woman's, were tight-clenched, and his breath came and went in nervous spasms. For a moment he gazed, and ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest

... lesson, but pretty hardly learned. Yet about the hardest part of it was that for months I so often had to hear a phrase which I had conceived a particular distaste for. It was, 'Oh, Ben, if ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... excursions to Philadelphia, he became enamoured "with one of those faces and forms, which, in a youth of twenty, to see, admire, and love, is one and the same thing;" and was united to the object of his affections, on the anniversary of his twenty-first year. This event gave him a distaste for serious study; and, long before this, he had felt a sentiment, bordering on contempt, for mercantile pursuits; he therefore prevailed upon his father to purchase him a neat country seat in the vicinity of Huntingdon. Here, seventeen happy years glided away swiftly and imperceptibly, when ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker

... familiar with the coarsest obscenity of the slum. Another great evil is the extent to which our Education tends to overstock the labour market with material for quill-drivers and shopmen, and gives our youth a distaste for sturdy labour. Many of the most hopeless cases in our Shelters are men of considerable education. Our schools help to enable a starving man to tell his story in more grammatical language than that which his father could have employed, but they do ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... and the doctor realized, as the weeks moved on, that they were working in vain; for Mr. Getz, in his statements to the directors, had appealed to some of their most deep-rooted prejudices. Tillie's filial insubordination, her "high-mindedness," her distaste for domestic work, so strong that she refused even to live under her father's roof—all these things made her unfit to be an instructor and guide to their young children. She would imbue the "rising generation" with her worldly and ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin

... couple with another requirement—equally insisted upon, perhaps—that, while to all fiction is allowed some play of invention, yet, fiction based on fact should never be contradictory to it; and is it not a fact, that, in real life, a consistent character is a rara avis? Which being so, the distaste of readers to the contrary sort in books, can hardly arise from any sense of their untrueness. It may rather be from perplexity as to understanding them. But if the acutest sage be often at his wits' ends to understand ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... and retreating (even with outcry) from the prod of the wild lime. I wonder if any one had ever the same attitude to Nature as I hold, and have held for so long? This business fascinates me like a tune or a passion; yet all the while I thrill with a strong distaste. The horror of the thing, objective and subjective, is always present to my mind; the horror of creeping things, a superstitious horror of the void and the powers about me, the horror of my own devastation and continual murders. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... should sacrifice her young happiness. In this matter, Arthur, I must not even think of you, though I love you well. I must consider only my child's welfare;—and in doing so I must try to sift my own feelings and my own judgment, and ascertain, if it be possible, whether my distaste to the man is reasonable or irrational;—whether I should serve her or sacrifice her by obstinacy of refusal. I can speak to you more plainly than to her. Indeed I have laid bare to you my whole heart and my whole mind. You have all my wishes, but you will understand ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope

... speech was this to endure from such a fellow, to be sure! and Barnaby so high in his own esteem, and holding himself a gentleman! Well, what with his distaste for the villain, and what with such odious familiarity, you can guess into what temper so impudent an address must have cast him. "You'll find the steward in yonder," he said, "and he'll show you the cabin," and therewith turned ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... the second reading, Diana pushed it away from her, rather hastily. Then she reminded herself again, elaborately, of the Mertons' disadvantages in life, painting them in imagination as black as possible. And before she had gone far with this process all doubt and distaste were once more swept away by the rush of yearning, of an interest she could not subdue, in this being of her own flesh and blood, the child of her mother's sister. She sat with flushed cheeks, absorbed in a stream of ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... companion and seized her arm without noticing the quiver of distaste before it lay limp in ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... was not to be found in the acquired and the artificial was perhaps the reason of his aversion for them. This aversion he carried so far that even acquired virtue was distasteful to him. Whatever may be thought of such a distaste esthetically, we must think that, morally, it was carrying his principle rather to an extreme. I have just come across a plan of study which I formed some months ago and I could not but smile to see how nothing of it has been ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... just when the shadows were beginning to grow long behind him, wondered if Jean would be back by the time he reached the ranch. He hoped so, with a vague distaste at finding the place empty of her cheerful presence. Be looked at his watch; it was nearly four o'clock. She ought to be home by half-past four or five, anyway. He glanced sidelong at Jim and quietly slackened his pace a little. ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower

... far too easy-going for large executive responsibility. So, I stayed on, doing just enough to keep a face of plausibility upon my pretexts for not returning to Washington. The fact was that Carlotta's death had deepened my mood of distaste into disgust. It had set me to brooding over the futility and pettiness of my activities in politics, of all activities of whatever kind. I watched Ed and my children resuming the routine of their lives, swiftly adjusting themselves to the loss of one who had been so dear ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... the distaste and scorn of her own work, were upon her, which the artist never escapes, which return as acutely after twenty successes as in the hours of suspense before the first essay. Marion's surroundings were not of a nature to reassure her. To her unaccustomed ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley

... Olga all the good fortune in the world, and being willing to take any amount of trouble to bring it about, she didn't particularly like her. And she flinched involuntarily, from the girl's more romantic and sentimental manifestations. This distaste had been heightened by the fact that along with Olga's adoration had gone a sense of proprietorship, with ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... perusal. He declared that for five years he had been endeavouring to bring the directors to see that, if they were to possess the coveted American patronage for which they always strove, they must accommodate themselves to certain American prejudices, one of which was the unalterable distaste Americans displayed in paying for refitting handsome gowns. He was delighted to say that her letter had been couched in such firm, decisive, and righteously indignant language, such as he himself never would ...
— Abroad with the Jimmies • Lilian Bell

... strangers, his imperfect appreciation of art, his preference of fish to flesh, his almost parsimonious economy in small matters, mingled with allusions to his domestic calamities, and frequent expressions of a growing distaste to Venetian society. On leaving the city, Moore passed a second afternoon at La Mira, had a glimpse of Allegra, and the first intimation of the existence of the notorious Memoirs. "A short time after dinner Byron left the room, and returned ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... sobbing, as he stood listening, gradually roused in him an unbearable restlessness. An unaccountable depression stole upon him—the reaction, perhaps, from a good deal of mental exertion and excitement in the day. A sort of sick distaste awoke in him for most of the incidents of existence—for Aunt Hannah, for Uncle Reuben's incomprehensible prayers, for the thought of the long Puritanical Sunday just coming. And, in addition, the low vibrations of that distant sobbing stirred in him again, by association, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Miss Branwell was, I believe, a kindly and conscientious woman, with a good deal of character, but with the somewhat narrow ideas natural to one who had spent nearly all her life in the same place. She had strong prejudices, and soon took a distaste to Yorkshire. From Penzance, where plants which we in the north call greenhouse flowers grow in great profusion, and without any shelter even in the winter, and where the soft warm climate allows the inhabitants, if so disposed, to live pretty constantly in the open air, it was a great change ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell

... to think of God. To-night he would not fly from the sound of the girls' voices. All that reluctance and distaste was over and done with; it belonged to the time when he was still struggling against the inevitable drift of his inclinations. Now he had passed to a state of mind that nothing external ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... fallen there? She ran swiftly forward, but as she neared the prostrate figure her fears fled, for she recognized by his garments the withered fool of the morning. He seemed to be moaning like a beast in pain, and her distaste of him could make no head against her pity. She knew, too, being Sicilian, how dangerous it was to lie in the moonlight—to do so was to court madness. She bent down beside him and touched him very softly on the shoulder. "What is the matter with ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... of the influences brought to bear on his mind during his two years' residence in Edinburgh, Darwin, who had entered that University with strong geological aspirations, left it and proceeded to Cambridge with a pronounced distaste for the whole subject. The result of this was that, during his career as an under-graduate, he neglected all the opportunities for geological study. During that important period of life, when he was between eighteen ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... almost of distaste he turned to Joan. "I was sorry that we didn't have another game before I ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile

... respiration of the lungs, should occasion frequent giddiness in the head, and swimming of the eyes, the certain recurrence of perspiration between the periods of 3 to 5 and 5 to 7, and the sensation of being seated on board ship. The obstruction of the spleen by the liver should naturally create distaste for liquid or food, debility of the vital energies and prostration of the four limbs. From my diagnosis of these pulses, there should exist these various symptoms, before (the pulses and the symptoms can be said) to harmonise. But should ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin

... circumstances surely justified a violation of the proverb. Till now a severe unromantic Hellenist, he held Egyptology in some contempt; and for Egypt, except in so far as it illustrated the art of Greece or remained a treasure-house for Greek manuscripts, his distaste was only surpassed by that of the Prophet Isaiah. A bias so striking in the immortal Herodotus is hardly shared by your modern encyclopaedist. While the science of Egyptology and its adepts command rather awe and wonder than sympathy from the uninitiated, who keep their praises for the ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross

... deep breath in which resolve and distaste were mingled. She had crossed the frontier, but she was not in Paris yet. I couldn't shirk the thing twice, knowing as I did her charm, her beauty, her air of proud, spirited graciousness—all the tools that equipped her. I couldn't, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... are very beautiful, and no doubt true, but I cannot feel their force," James Abercrombie said, with something in his tone and manner so like a distaste for the whole subject, that his friend felt unwilling to press it ...
— The Last Penny and Other Stories • T. S. Arthur

... Why hadn't he pitched the thing into the water at the foot of their yard! There was time still: he would take the balls of opium and dispose of them secretly. A sudden energy, a renewed sense of strength, flooded him. This distaste for Nettie changed into a pity at the ill luck that had followed her: she didn't deserve it. Generous emotions expanded his heart. He dreamed of taking hold of his father's small commerce in rum and sugar with the West Indies and turning ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... but Tibble himself was laid by for many days. The epidemic went through the Dragon court, though some had it lightly, and only two young children actually died of it. It laid a heavy hand on Tibble, and as his distaste for women rendered his den almost inaccessible to Bet Smallbones, who looked after most of the patients, Stephen Birkenholt, whose nursing capacities had been developed in Newgate, spent his spare hours in attending him, sat with him in the evenings, slept on a ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... distaste even while she breathed a shade more freely. Evidently from John's tone her own diagnosis had not occurred to the hero of it. "She had a matrimonial scheme on foot when I first met her," he went on. "She was considering ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham

... with the shortcomings of the orthodox religious world. Its faults of temper, its repulsive manners, its custom of making home unlovely, its distaste of innocent amusement, its habits of censure, its self-sufficiency and pharisaical character, are touched with a caustic but healing power. Only the hand of a friend could have done this thing. No point of doctrine is questioned, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... misses, he finally bagged a small animal, something like a rabbit and something like a kangaroo, and a couple of round-bodied, plump birds, almost as large as domestic hens. These they dressed, with considerable distaste and a ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... they be hard of digestion, melancholy; yet as Fuchsius excepts, cap. 6. lib. 2. Instit. sect. 2, [1463]"The stomach doth readily digest, and willingly entertain such meats we love most, and are pleasing to us, abhors on the other side such as we distaste." Which Hippocrates confirms, Aphoris. 2. 38. Some cannot endure cheese, out of a secret antipathy; or to see a roasted duck, which to others is ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... me like a child who is being kissed against its will; but I took her tenderly in my arms, and gently put my lips on her large eyes, which she closed with evident distaste under my kisses on her fresh cheeks and full lips which she ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... which the traditions and institutions no less than the physical conditions of their former countries had denied them. There was no need for him to enlarge on this fact; but there are repeated indications of the distaste and alarm with which he witnessed a demand that newcomers from Europe, or some classes of them, should be accorded lesser privileges than they ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... song-writer nor the song-singer ever wearies. It is the one great passion with which the universal modern mind sympathises, and from the expressions of which it quaffs inexhaustible delight. This holds true even of the cynical people who profess a distaste for love and lovers. For love has for them its comic side,—it appears to them exquisitely humorous in the human weakness it causes and brings to light; and if they do not enjoy the song in its praise, they seldom fail to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... and burn all living things. Thus the fire of grief and sorrow, once enkindled, ceases not to burn, ever giving rise to birth and death; but whilst this fire of sorrow ceases not, yet are there two kinds of fire, one that burns but has no fuel left. So when the heart of man has once conceived distaste for sin, this distaste removing covetous desire, covetous desire extinguished, there is rescue; if once this rescue has been found, then with it is born sight and knowledge, by which distinguishing the streams ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... There was no suggestion of tears in her eyes, but their look was the sadder for that. When the sitting was ended Noel tried to make her take a glass of wine or some fruit, but she turned from them almost with distaste. As she was leaving, however, she asked if she might have the roses on the table. When Noel eagerly said yes she took the great bunch in her hand and went off—he ...
— A Beautiful Alien • Julia Magruder

... taken some kind of distaste for Arranstoun and shirked going there—I shall have to face it now, I suppose, because it is such hard luck on the people when an owner is away, and so one must come ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn

... sourly. He was a man of bullying rather than of tactful propensities and he could not conceal his distaste for an interview with Jim Weeks at this particular moment. To tell the truth, he had begun to fear the results of the agreement with McNally which rested in his coat pocket. Weeks was a hard man to fight, and wasted no words on disloyalty. However, Blaney knew that dissimulation ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster

... abstract speculation in the theory of human affairs; too witty or too aphoristic, he never seemed at a loss to decide, but too careless, perhaps too infirm, ever to come to a decision, he leaned on others. He shrunk from the council-table; he had that distaste for the routine of business which studious sedentary men are too apt to indulge; and imagined that his health, which he said was the health of the kingdom, depended on the alternate days which he devoted to the chase; Royston and Theobalds ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... cast of countenance. She was leading by the hand a small, fat boy of about fourteen years of age, whose likeness to the portrait on the chair proclaimed his identity. He had escaped the collision, but seemed offended by it; for, eyeing the bending peer with cold distaste, he summed up his opinion of him in the ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... of Pau. Her daughter, Marguerite, the victim of her schemes—an unwilling actor in the drama—suffered much sorrow and privation within these walls, after her marriage with a prince who never could surmount the distaste which circumstances of such peculiar horror as attended their union had given him; and the once cheerful place—the scene of splendour for centuries—lost its glory and its happy character after the beloved family of Queen ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... All was to do again: Heitman Michael, in his own hateful phrase, would act just as he had first intended, and Jurgen would be brushed aside by the man's brute strength. This man would take away Dorothy, and leave the life of Jurgen to become a business which Jurgen remembered with distaste. It was unfair. ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell

... selfishness she had often neglected, while now she called to her in vain. She idealized her image: and the great example which Marthe had left upon her mind of a profound life of meditation helped to fill her with distaste for the life of the world, in which there was no truth or serious purpose. She saw nothing but its hypocrisy, and those amiable compromises, which at any other time would have amused her, now revolted ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... gone our different ways promptly but for a flurry of wind. I suspect that, with the money in his hand, he was as eager to see the last of me as I was to see the last of him. But I felt ashamed of my distaste of him; it seemed heartless. And when the cold wind came swooping across from the docks, setting him shivering and coughing, I thought of the spare pea-coat I had in my bag. It was serviceable and warm, and I had ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer

... slang, but it would not convey the simplicity of the narrator. He was the son of a large family who had lived for centuries in one of the highest villages in the Bernese Oberland. He attained his size and strength early, but with a singular distaste to use them in the rough regular work on the farm, although he was a great climber and mountaineer, and, what was at first overlooked as mere boyish fancy, had an insatiable love and curious knowledge of plants and flowers. He knew the haunts of Edelweiss, ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte

... the resignation of Oliver Ellsworth, but Jay resolutely declined. I have often wondered whether Jay's mortification at having his only important constitutional decision summarily condemned by the people may not have given him a distaste ...
— The Theory of Social Revolutions • Brooks Adams

... 'you have always been my evil genius. From our childhood you have stood in my way with your superior strength, beauty, prowess and address. When I was young I simply shrank from you in shame and distaste, but as I grew older I learned to detest you; and now that I see you again, after five years of absence, handsome as ever, taller than ever, and radiant, notwithstanding your nearness to death, with memories such ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green

... An extreme distaste for that respectable member of society was depicted in Fyne's face even as he was telling me of him after all these years. He was a specimen of precisely the class of which people like the Fynes have the least experience; and I imagine he jarred on them painfully. He possessed all the civic ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... the subject of marriage to Germinie, Mademoiselle de Varandeuil touched upon the real cause of her trouble. She placed her hand upon the seat of her ennui. Her maid's uneven temper, her distaste for life, the languor, the emptiness, the discontent of her existence, arose from that disease which medical science calls the melancholia of virgins. The torment of her twenty-four years was the ardent, excited, poignant longing for marriage, for that state which ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... to the last, Tavy. Goodbye, dear. [She pats his check; has an impulse to kiss him and then another impulse of distaste which prevents her; finally runs away through the garden ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw

... recited these verses Samuel felt sadder than before, and he cursed the poets. "They did me great harm," he said, bitterly. "Without them I had spent days interwoven with gold and silk. My future was secure: it was they who gave me a distaste for my position. I believed in them; I was the dupe of their hollow declamation; they taught me thoughtless contempt, and they gave me the sickly ambition to play the silly part of a man of fine sentiments. I despised the ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... leather pumps. He fumbled for his handkerchief, thinking he would brush the earth from them. He searched each of his pockets. His handkerchief was gone. No matter. He got to his feet, lurching for a moment dizzily. He glanced with distaste at his rumpled evening clothing. To hide it as far as possible he buttoned his overcoat collar about his neck. On tip-toe he approached the door, and, with the emotions of a thief, opened it quietly. He sighed. ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp

... takes flight in the intellectual world, learns to live amidst its more spiritual realities, to put names to thoughts, which is far higher than to put names to things. It is in this world that the best things in the best books live; and the modern school-bred distaste for them, the low-ranged mental action that hovers near the coastline of matter and can not launch out with zest into the open sea of thoughts, holding communion with the great dead of the past or the great living of the distant present, ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall

... affected by her distaste—that he is a gentleman. He plays with his nobility. With his reputation of gentleman, he has never been known to play. You will understand the slightly hypocritical air—it is not of sufficient importance for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... discovered an interest as keen as that of her foster-sister and very much more intelligent. She had childhood memories of Ohio. Much to his distaste, she persuaded Farley to remain most of the day with them in ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet

... returned, with a slight bow, and a smile, in which, perhaps, irony was concealed by playfulness. "After the risk you have so lately run, even I, confirmed and obstinate sea-monster as I am, have no reason to complain of your distaste for our element. And yet, you see, it is not entirely without its charms. No lake, that lies within the limits of yon Continent, can be more calm and sweet than is this bit of ocean. Were we a few degrees more southward, ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper

... decided chin. He had none of the sleepiness and fatalistic languor of the fat hubble-bubble smoking Turk of caricature. The whole of him looked aristocratic, energetic, perfectly poised and absolutely self-possessed. Many of the women in court glanced at him without any distaste. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... accord with the selfishness of each one, and yet give the manly excuse of sound sense and wise policy to all, was the more decisive in its effect, inasmuch as the young Alwyn, from his own determined courage, and his avowed distaste to the Lancaster faction, had been expected to favour warlike counsels. The mayor himself, who was faithfully and personally attached to Edward, with a deep sigh gave way to the feeling of the assembly. And the resolution being once come to, Henry Lee was the first to ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... fitted him too tightly; he was too stout. He had a trick which I noticed even then, which grew on him later, of pulling his jowl with his right hand as he spoke, and his jowl was already fat and pouchy. His appearance filled me with distaste. I lay stress on this physical repulsion, because I think most people felt it, and in itself, it is a tribute to the fascination of the man that he should have overcome the first impression so completely and so quickly. I ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... father was as firm as he was puritanical—and obstinately interposed his authority as a husband, to prevent my indulging in my favorite entertainments. This state of affairs continued, my dear, until you attained the age of sixteen, when you began to feel a distaste for the insipidity of a domestic life, and longed for a change.—Our positions were then precisely similar: we both were debarred from the delights of gay society, for which we so ardently longed. One obstacle, and one only, lay in our way; that obstacle was your father—my husband. We were ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn

... me I should doubtless have continued at work and in time have become a veritable squatter. I was able to command constant employment in any colonial capacity, and had been more than once offered the overseership of a run, but the old distaste for the life of a sheep-farmer ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... for that; but set about thy amendment in dress when thou leavest off thy mourning; for why shouldst thou prepossess in thy disfavour all those who never saw thee before?—It is hard to remove early-taken prejudices, whether of liking or distaste. People will hunt, as I may say, for reasons to confirm first impressions, in compliment to their own sagacity: nor is it every mind that has the ingenuousness to confess itself half mistaken, when it finds itself to be wrong. Thou thyself art ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson

... upon this spectral image (which, with a slow and solemn movement, as if more fully to sustain its role, stalked to and fro among the waltzers) he was seen to be convulsed, in the first moment with a strong shudder either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow reddened ...
— The Raven • Edgar Allan Poe

... sea and its exploration. The Holy Roman Empire had given his great grandfather the title of prince, and estates in Thuringia gave him money enough to do what he pleased, an unfortunate marriage gave him a distaste for High Civilization, and his scientific bent and passion for the sea—inherited with a strain of old Norse ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... born Paul Rembrandt. At an early age he manifested a stubborn, independent will, which his father tried in vain to subdue. He caused his son to work in the mill, intending that he should succeed him in its management; but the boy shewed so decided a distaste for the employment, that his father resolved to make him a priest, and sent him to study at Leyden. Every one knows, however, that few lads of fifteen, endowed with great muscular vigour and abundance of animal spirits, will take naturally and without compulsion to the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 420, New Series, Jan. 17, 1852 • Various

... visions of greatness, these lofty aspirations, not for renown, but for the inward consciousness of intellectual elevation, of moral sublimity, of heroism, had no influence, as is ordinarily the case with day-dreams, to give Jane a distaste for life's energetic duties. They did not enervate her character, or convert her into a mere visionary; on the contrary, they but roused and invigorated her to alacrity in the discharge of every ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott

... out of her terrible stupor with the distaste to take up the thread of life which sometimes comes after a night of forgetfulness in sleep. This stupor, which might have destroyed her, and the fever which had shaken her, seemed to her sweet and enviable ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... habits, not likely to be popular. Your brother knew this, and saved me from petty contentions and invidious calumnies. He was the best and only friend I possessed. I purpose soon to leave Malta and the army. The former is become painful to me,—for the latter I have a distaste, A feeling of delicacy to Acme Frascati would prevent my seeing your brother, even if Mr. Graham had not forbidden the interview, as likely to harass his mind. Will you, then, assure him of my unabated attachment, and tell me that you forgive me for the ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman

... me by my fellow-townsmen, nor the scorn of my fellow-physicians, nor the ill things falsely spoken against me, nor all the measureless mass of possible evil, could have brought me to such despair, and hatred of life, and distaste of all pleasure, and lasting sorrow. I bitterly wept this misery, that I must needs be a laughing-stock, that marriage must be denied me, and that I must ever live in solitude. You ask for the cause of this misfortune, ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters

... assurance and ambition. He was understood to have divorced his first wife, an amiable, faithful, but limited little creature, under circumstances of some cruelty, and even barbarity, to form a second union more in harmony with his mounting ideas for the future. A subtle atmosphere of distaste and disapproval had enveloped him and his for many years, and the social advances of himself and his wife had been, ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... should be established in childhood. Mrs. Richards says: "Habit rather than instinct guides civilized man in the choice of food." Likes or dislikes for food should not be discussed in the presence of children. Such discussions may establish distaste for a food ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer

... Banister, the Mayor, Who is of worship, and of good respect, And in his charge discreet and circumspect. For I protest to God I never saw, A town more wisely governed by the law. They told me when my Sovereign there was last, That one man's rashness seemed to give distaste. It grieved them all, but when at last they found, His Majesty was pleased, their joys were crowned. He knew, the fairest garden hath some weeds, He did accept their kind intents, for deeds: One man there was, that with his zeal too hot, And furious haste, himself much overshot. ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor

... too, he was discontented, dissatisfied and disobedient. Time after time he ran away to Boston. He went on from bad to worse, falling in with vagrants, learning their talk and their ways, acquiring a love for wandering and a distaste for regularity and direction. Taken into custody by the Juvenile Court, and placed on probation with a family outside of Boston, James again ran away to mingle with a crowd of his old associates in Boston. It was at this ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing

... would last for ever and ever and ever, on a state which he had never dwelt on or realised to himself, filled him with a blank, shuddering awe; and next came a worse, a sickening thought: if his feeling for the bliss of heaven was almost distaste, could he be fit for it? could he dare to hope for it? It was his Judge Whom he was about to meet, and he had been impatient and weary of Bible and Catechism, and Dr. Bathurst's teaching; he had been inattentive and careless at his prayers; he had been disobedient ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge

... himself, and the accuracy of it, confused him. He took refuge in the only method he knew; he threw himself on her pity; he made violent, passionate love to her, but her only expression was one of distaste. When at last he caught her to him she perforce submitted, a frozen thing that told him, more than any words, how completely he had lost her. He threw her away from ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... is needed for obtaining a fair share of the comforts of life—is much less universal. The force of habit, the desire for a tranquil domestic life, the love of country and of home, are often, among really able men, stronger than the impulse of ambition; and a distaste for the competitions and contentions of life, for the increasing responsibilities of greatness, and for the envy and jealousies that seldom fail to follow in its trail, may be found among men who, if ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... best to make amends. But a man who has been petticoat-ridden for years loses the knack, somehow, of comradeship with men. He acquires, too, a knowledge of women, and a distaste for them, equaled only, perhaps, by that of an ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... years or intelligence to comprehend the beauty we so delight in. We are disappointed when he does not respond, and wonder why. Is it not the result of forcing him to use these things before he is ready, and thus only fostering his distaste? ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... news was public in Richmond and—though received with a deep, grave joy—braced every nerve and steadied every pulse in it. There was no distaste to face the real danger when it showed itself; it was only the sickening suspense that was unbearable. No one in the city had really doubted the result, from the first; and the news from the prelude to the terrible and decisive fight, yet to come, but ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... desire? The harsh old woman would have smiled grimly at such a question. 'A little appetite,' she might have answered. She was like a dyspeptic at a feast; the finer the dishes that were set before her, the greater her distaste; that spiritual gusto which lends a savour to the meanest act of living, and without which all life seems profitless, had gone from her for ever. Yet—and this intensified her wretchedness—though the banquet ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... writing out a psychiatrist's prescription, or he might not. But producing it would be out of all rationality! No camera, the patient would be the star, and most lines would be ad libbed. Cochrane viewed such a production with extreme distaste. But of course, if a man wanted only to be famous, it might be handled as a straight public-relations job. In any case, though, it would amount to flattery in three dimensions and Cochrane would rather have no part in it. But he had to arrange the ...
— Operation: Outer Space • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... felt the beginnings of a strong distaste for Kathy. Why couldn't she leave well enough alone? But he only said: "Well, yes. I thought it might be fun. Let's ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett

... her lips. That had sealed it, possibly. He saw her sitting in rapt fancy in her bedroom— if not more vocal in the rooms below. He saw her writing to an unseen mother in a tone of joyful complacency, and looking at her finger for a ring which he could not place there. He saw the distaste of his own home circle, to which this event had come at least a year too soon. He saw the amazement, and worse, of Arthur Lemoyne, whose plans for coming to town were now all made and to whom this turn would prove a psychological shock ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... sent short letters," said she, "because he did not want to trouble me with long ones at this time." But, though this excuse was as plausible as most of those we invent to assist us to believe what we want to believe, it did not quite banish a certain hollow, hungry feeling, a sense of distaste for such food as the letters did provide. She was not experienced enough to know that the expression of the countenance of a letter is telltale beyond the expression of the countenance of its writer; that the face may be ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... was certain. It was no child who stood there with a face of sick distaste. The professor's mood of indulgent maturity melted into dismay before the half-seen horror ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay



Words linked to "Distaste" :   aversion, dislike



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