"Horrible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pool of water. Stooping over in quest of minnows, he jerked his head back as though he had been stung. He had caught sight of his reflected face. So horrible was it that sensibility awoke long enough to be shocked. There were three minnows in the pool, which was too large to drain; and after several ineffectual attempts to catch them in the tin bucket he forbore. He was ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... had chalked it off into what corresponded to five-yard lines, and they were hurling twenty-two chess-men across it in "flying wedges" and practising the several tricks which young Langham had intrusted to his sister under an oath of secrecy. The sight filled the directors with the horrible fear that business troubles had turned the President's mind, but after they had sat for half an hour perched on the high chairs around the table, while Hope excitedly explained the game to them, ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... laid her slender little finger on the other's open wound? He had the strictest notions of duty and of honor: it was absolutely essential she never should realize: but, alas! the sympathetic widow was playing the most divinely romantic waltz. To complete the horrible temptation, Ellen looked suddenly at him with her tender eyes shining and her delicate ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... by Mr. Angell as to their chances of commercial profit from the war. It is that if Mr. Angell had succeeded to the fullest extent in convincing them that there was not a quarter per cent. to be made out of the war, nay, that—horrible thought!—they would actually be poorer at the end of the war than at the beginning, they would have gone to war all ...
— Peace Theories and the Balkan War • Norman Angell
... smiling victory; I tell you 'tis an uncouth, distorted, savage idol; hideous, bloody, and barbarous. The rites performed before it are shocking to think of. You great poets should show it as it is—ugly and horrible, not beautiful and serene. Oh, sir, had you made the campaign, believe me, you never would have sung ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... faint, but all too clear, came a horrible chorus of human cries of agony. Down there in a ramshackle section of the city the wretched houses had fallen in upon the sleeping families. Down there throughout the day a fire burned the great part of whose fuel it is too ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... the nest of the Chalicodoma of the Sheds from its tile—a nest sometimes quite eight inches thick—we find live inhabitants only in a thin outer layer. All the remainder, the catacombs of past generations, is but a horrible heap of dead, shrivelled, ruined, decomposed things. Into this sub-stratum of the ancient city the unreleased Bees, the untransformed larvae fall as dust; here the honey-stores of old go sour, here the uneaten provisions ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... interesting briefly to note the employment of Indians by the Spaniards. Their agent, or leader, in this horrible warfare, was a wretch named Benavides, who may fairly lay claim to the distinction of being the most perfect monster who ever disgraced humanity. He had originally been a common soldier in the Buenos Ayrean army, and, together with his brother, had carte blanche from the Spaniards ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... with auntie—oh, I do, I do," she said, among her sobs. "Mamma doesn't love me like Colin and Pixie. If she did, she wouldn't go and bring a nasty, horrible little girl to live with us. I hate her, and I shall always hate her—nasty ...
— Rosy • Mrs. Molesworth
... bodies had rebelled. It was as if acid had been dashed upon them, destroying in one blinding instant all power for evil. With every breath, now, a new misery smote them. But worse than this torture was the monstrous nature of their afflictions. It was mysterious, horrible; they believed themselves to be dying and screamed in abysmal terror ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... through a glass-bottom boat. They saw a half-clad man grab another in a bathing suit, and immediately a submarine wrestling match was staged. Burton gripped Hill about the throat, and Hill's fingers slipped forthwith to Burton's windpipe. The scene grew more and more horrible as the moments passed, and Clancy fell to throwing aside his garments preparatory to making a trip of his ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish
... read to you," interrupted Benjamin, "an account of a printer's execution in England, about twenty years before my father emigrated to this country. I came across it in this book, a few days ago. It is horrible." ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... ridiculously inaccessible to laughter, who, caricaturing their Nietzsche and misunderstanding their Shaw, invite one to set up consciously with them in the business of being Overmen, to rule a world full of our betters, by fraud and force. It is a foolish teaching saved only from being horrible by being utterly ludicrous. For us the best is faith and humility, truth and service, our utmost glory is to have seen the vision and to have failed—not altogether.... For ourselves and such as we are, let us not "deal in pride," let us be glad to learn ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... they are, they can hardly give you an idea of the truth. At Nantes, for instance, the guillotine is too slow; and hundreds of men, women, and children are put into boats, which are sunk in the middle of the river. It is too horrible ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... horrible witch! You would have perished in rags if we had not taken you up! And now you want to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... the next day that John Markley in evening clothes, with his great paunch swathed in a white silk vest, smirking like a gorged jackal, showing his fellow-townsmen for the first time his coarse, yellow teeth and his thin, cruel lips, looked like some horrible cartoon of his former self. Colonel Morrison did not describe the bride, but she passed our office that day, going the rounds of the dry-goods stores, giggling with the men clerks—a picture of sin that made ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... seen of any of those who had been on board this ill-fated schooner when she went down. It was known that twenty-one souls were in her, including the man and the boy who had belonged to the light-house. As the boat moved slowly over this sad ruin, however, a horrible and startling spectacle came in view. Two bodies were seen, within a few feet of the surface of the water, one grasped in the arms of the other, in the gripe of despair. The man held in the grasp, was kept beneath the water solely by the ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... S. U. under Westcott's presidentship, leaving to the Guild of St. Matthew their old work of justifying God to the People, while we devoted ourselves to converting and impregnating the solid, stolid, flock of our own church folk within the fold.... We had our work cut out for us in dislodging the horrible cast-iron formulae, which were indeed wholly obsolete, but which seemed for that very reason to take tighter possession of their last refuge in the bulk of ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... goes amongst them, suspected of not favoring their cause, or of the remotest connection with others who do not favor it, with a most savage and fiendish cruelty. It is the conflict between barbarism and civilization, between liberty and the most horrible despotism that ever cursed this earth, in which we are called to ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... and pleasant, especially by contrast with the horrible London fog outside. Squeezing my small person into a corner where I was in nobody's way, I watched the proceedings for a while. Suddenly an agreeable voice at my side asked me if I would like a look at the catalogue. I glanced at the speaker, and in a sense fell in love with him at once—as ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... "This is horrible, Harry! I—I can't believe it! So far as my friendship for Miss Farwell goes, that is only an incident. It does not matter ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... The tension of his style, which is never relaxed, [21] represents not only great effort, but long-matured and late-born thought. In the angry silence of forty years had been formed that fierce and almost brutal directness of description which paints, as has been well said, with a vividness truly horrible. In preaching virtue, he first frightens away modesty. There is scarce one of his poems that does not shock even where it rebukes. And three of them are so hideous in their wonderful power that it is impossible to read them with any pleasure, though one of these (the sixth) is perhaps the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... are absolutely in my power to do with as I please." He stopped, and, without moving his eyes from Allen's face, drew the revolver from the pocket of his coat. His manner was so terrible that Allen gazed at him, breathing faintly, and with his eyes fixed in horrible fascination. "There is no law," Holcombe repeated, softly. "There is no help for you now or later. It is a question of two men locked in a room with a table and sixty thousand dollars between them. That is the situation. Two men and sixty thousand ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... of fifty acres, in a lonely neighborhood, And near a grove of somber pines the shackly farm-house stood; And all the folks, for miles around, did solemnly declare That ghosts and goblins horrible held nightly revel there. ...
— The Old Hanging Fork and Other Poems • George W. Doneghy
... houses, they were led through the streets of Pesca, and on their way had ample opportunity of witnessing the incredible cruelties exercised by the pirates upon the inhabitants of that ill-fated town. What made these cruelties appear still more horrible, was the part taken in them by the Uzcoque women, who, as was the case at that period with most of the Sclavonian races, were all trained to the use of arms,[1] and who on this occasion swelled the ranks of the freebooters. Their ferocity exceeded, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... when they produce trouble it is chiefly imaginary, in most instances, since they are a common source of worry in young men in case of any irregularities in the sexual functions. Advantage is taken of this fact by quacks, who find it for their profit to advertise all sorts of horrible and impossible results of the condition. The testicle on the diseased side may become smaller than its fellow, but in few cases does any serious consequence result from varicocele. Pain in the hollow of the back may be the only symptom of varicocele in cases where there are any symptoms. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... he has, all you can get. To-night, When all is dark (we must have darkness, mind, For deeds like this) blind creatures will creep out With groping hands and gaping mouths, lean arms, And shrivelled bodies, branded, fettered, lame, Distorted, horrible; and they will weep Great tears like gouts of blood upon our feet, And we shall succour them and make them think (That's if you have not mangled their poor souls As well, or burned their children with their homes), We'll try ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... more and he would be up to his head, and then——? Brave as he was, the great scout did not dare to think further. The idea of a death in the treacherous quicksand was truly horrible. ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... earth is going on!" he began rather abruptly as soon as he entered the room. "What horrible cookery is ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... though with some severe losses, and would be able before long to strike northward in a well-chosen direction; for all that these were great and permanent gains. Yet the North was not cheered. The great loss of life at Shiloh, the greatest battle in the war so far, created a horrible impression. Halleck, under whom all this progress had been made, properly enough received a credit, which critics later have found to be excessive, though it is plain that he had reorganised his army well; but Grant was felt to have been caught ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... not frightened,—awe-struck in this dark and horrible place, alone?" inquired Mrs. Chipperton, holding on to ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... is a horrible little house, Uncle George," said Rea,—"the dirtiest hovel I ever saw. It is worse than they are ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... threats of the mighty-fisted Samson, as well as the stern John Benton, against any on that ranch who should be caught "consorting with that low-lived Ferd or the late manager." Besides, in spite of Jessica's apparent indifference to the glowing eyes of the white horse they infected him with a horrible fear; so he made his escape at the first chance; leading Nimrod around to the house and tying him there to await Ninian's pleasure, while he himself resorted to the most distant and safest spot he could find. This had seemed, in his mind, the mission corridor; ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... good part; and both houses voted an address to Philip and Mary, acknowledging that they had been guilty of a most horrible defection from the true church; professing a sincere repentance of their past transgressions; declaring their resolution to repeal all laws enacted in prejudice of the church of Rome; and praying their majesties, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... there is no soul; that You are God in disguise, and that He is fooling Himself in making believe that He is You; that Life is but a Divine masquerade or sleight-of-hand performance; that You are God, but that You (God) are fooling Yourself (God) in order to amuse Yourself (God). Is not this horrible? And yet it shows to what lengths the human mind will go before it will part with some pet theory of metaphysics with which it has been hypnotized. Do you think that we have overdrawn the picture? Then read some of the teachings of these schools of the Oriental ...
— A Series of Lessons in Raja Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... we had a most horrible sight; for riding up to the entrance where the horse came out, we found the carcasses of another horse and of two men, devoured by the ravenous creatures; and one of the men was no doubt the same whom we heard fire the gun, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... It is impossible to explain. I saw you with my own eyes making an exhibition of yourself with a horrible creature in salmon-pink. I'm not asking you who she is. I'm not questioning you about your relations with her at all. I don't care who she was. The mere fact that you were at a public restaurant with a person of that kind is enough. No doubt you think I am ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... behalf of the Jews against the tyranny of the Muscovite; here sympathizing with South America against Spain, with Greece against Turkey, and with Hungary against Austria; there promoting that memorable peace between the Russians and Japanese at Portsmouth, which terminated one of the most horrible hecatombs of peoples on record in the history of warfare. The methods and rules of their teaching, the inspiration of their inventors, the penetrating nature of their institutions, the reproductive influence of their example, ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... pursed his lips together. Well, thought he, this is a man of gold. He is not such a fool as he looks. He guesses that the treasury would like to take the commissariat out of the hands of the war office, and that all this was mixed up with the inquiry at Komorn. Then, after that horrible fiasco, the clattering swords are at the top of the tree, and would be very glad to get the manipulation of the lands on the military frontier into their own hands. They think it would be a good milch-cow, and the deficit caused by the bankruptcy of the Levetincz tenant gives ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... not however deny, that some loss might accompany the abolition; but there could be no difficulty in providing for it. Such a consideration ought not to be allowed to impede their progress in getting rid of an horrible injustice. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the - Abolition of the African Slave-Trade, by the British Parliament (1839) • Thomas Clarkson
... going home, fellows, and I shall wait there just one hour for an assurance that you have faith in me, and do not believe a word of this horrible charge. If such a message, sent by the whole club, reaches me within that time, I will undertake to prove my innocence. If it does not come, then I cease, not only to be your captain, but ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... "Horrible!" agreed Hal. "But come. We must move. It is as Captain Derevaux said. The Belgians will be unable to hold the town. They must retire upon the forts; and we had better ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... as they beheld the destruction of their dwellings and heard the agonizing cries of their wives and offspring. "The burning of the wigwams," says a contemporary writer, "the shrieks and cries of the women and children, and the yelling of the warriors, exhibited a most horrible and affecting scene, so that it greatly moved some of the soldiers." The same writer cautiously adds, "They were in much doubt then, and afterwards seriously inquired, whether burning their enemies alive could be consistent ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... a handful for your hair," I told her, and leaned over farther, farther, reaching out.... Then I was falling, with Kelvar's face growing fainter, and in my ears a horrible ringing like the world coming to ...
— Out Around Rigel • Robert H. Wilson
... longer do so. My plain duty is to take a personal part in this coming election, go to the primaries, throw the weight of my influence, whatever it is, toward the nomination and election of good men, and plunge into the very depths of the entire horrible whirlpool of deceit, bribery, political trickery and saloonism as it exists in Raymond today. I would sooner walk up to the mouth of a cannon any time than do this. I dread it because I hate the touch of the whole matter. I would give almost any ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... her fabrications that several miles of road slipped by unnoticed. There came a strange confusion in her thoughts. It seemed to her that she was arguing the Hilliard case with some one. Then with a horrible start she saw that the face of her opponent was Sylvester's and she ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... dropped upon my sofa—I felt faint. The man went on, liking to talk as persons of his class do when they have something horrible to tell. She usually rang for the stewardess early, but this morning of course there had been no ring. The stewardess had gone in all the same about eight o'clock and found the cabin empty. That was about an ...
— The Patagonia • Henry James
... which imprisoned them in their tent for another forty-eight hours. They were now running short of oil for warming and cooking purposes, but the little party won through after a very rough march full of horrible hardships and discomforts, and reached Cape Evans on the 1st August, when they had faced the dreadful winter weather conditions on the cruel Ice Barrier for five weeks. What forlorn objects they did ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... times did what they could, therefore, to inspire virtue, and not to reduce human frailty to despair; but also there are crimes so horrible that no mystery accorded expiation for them. Nero, for all that he was emperor, could not get himself initiated into the mysteries of Ceres. Constantine, on the Report of Zosimus, could not obtain pardon for his crimes: he was stained with the blood of his wife, his son and all his ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... the discussion of these things is, to speak frankly, Fear. We know, very many of us, that our present state has many evil aspects, seems unjust and wasteful of human happiness, is full of secret and horrible dangers, abounding in cruelties and painful things; that our system of sanctions and prohibitions is wickedly venial, pressing far more gravely on the poor than on the rich, and that it is enormously ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... instead of a tartan shooting jacket, my shoes were turned up at the toes, and I had on spectacles and a tartar cap, and was writing notes in a book. On one side a snake-king was politely handing me fruit, and on the other a horrible demon ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... a commotion by introducing this resolution: "While we recognize the disabilities which legal marriage imposes upon woman as wife and mother, and while we pledge ourselves to seek their removal by putting her on equal terms with man, we abhorrently repudiate 'free loveism' as horrible and mischievous to society, and disown any sympathy with it." It was the first time the subject had been brought before a woman's rights convention and its introduction was indignantly resented by the "old guard." Lucy Stone exclaimed: "I feel it is a mortal shame ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... it is a horrible mess. I can't get over the injustice of the poor kid's paying so hard when he was just trying to do ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... Hugh told him, "when a meteor drops down, it buries itself in the earth and gradually cools off, for it's been made almost red-hot by passing so swiftly through space. But it doesn't, as a rule, burst and tear a horrible slash ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... and the oracle-deity, the M'limo, promised through the priests that if the Matabele would make war upon the white man his bullets in their flight should be changed to water, and his cannon shells become eggs. Horrible murders followed upon this encouragement, too horrible, indeed, to repeat; but a general idea of the blood-lust which now possessed the Matabele may be gathered from the fact of over a hundred and fifty English people (scattered, ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... need more. They need assurance that they and their loved ones can walk the streets of America without being afraid. Parents need to know their children will not be victims of child pornography and abduction. This year we will intensify our drive against these and other horrible crimes like ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan
... victim, my historic attitude entirely failed, and I was sensible of some repugnance for the natives. But here, too, the priests maintained their jocular attitude: rallying the cannibals as upon an eccentricity rather absurd than horrible; seeking, I should say, to shame them from the practice by good-natured ridicule, as we shame a child from stealing sugar. We may here recognise the temperate and sagacious mind ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... virgin, had long a firm hold upon the minds of the people. Hartmann von Aue's story, Der arme Heinrich, and a score of similar tales testify of the folk-faith in the regeneration born of this horrible baptism—a survival or recrudescence of the crassest form of the doctrine that the life dwells in the blood. Strack, in his valuable treatise on "Human Blood, in Superstition and Ceremonial," devotes a brief section to the belief in the cure of leprosy by means of human blood ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... give me away! I give you my word of honor—I give you my word as a Porthoning—I can't help it! You know what they call the damned thing when women have it—kleptomania, isn't it? I tell you I can't see these things without that same horrible, fascinating, cruel instinct! My hands are on them before I know it. But——" he broke off. "It's sending me mad, Paul; for, as I live, I never put hands ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of her companion, a spasm of stifled sympathy. This was reproduced by the only sound that broke their supreme embrace when, a month later, the "arrangement," as her periodical uprootings were called, played the part of the horrible forceps. Embedded in Mrs. Wix's nature as her tooth had been socketed in her gum, the operation of extracting her would really have been a case for chloroform. It was a hug that fortunately left nothing to say, for the ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... mountainside, and its music is strangely soothing and sweet to his ears. Quite abruptly a broad plateau spreads out before him. It is edged on one side by a sheer drop to unimaginable depths, on the other the uprising crags overhang in horrible menace. The plateau is strewn with bleaching bones, and from beneath the overhanging rocks comes a fetid stench. Now the figure is lost again, and the dreadful straining eyes search vainly for the fair face and ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... dwelt eels, and the eel-mother said to her daughters, when they begged to be allowed to go a little way alone up the stream. 'Do not go far, lest the horrible eel-spearer should come, ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... returned, Miss Darling, attired in ferns, was executing what she called the wood-nymph's dance, and Todd and Minor were capering about her making horrible faces and pretending to be satyrs. The rest were keeping time with hands and feet. All had agreed that not a letter nor a newspaper should be brought to the camp during their eight days' absence from civilization. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... entreat you," exclaimed Morrel in a low voice, "do not speak another word, count; do not prolong my punishment." The count fancied that he was yielding, and this belief revived the horrible doubt that had overwhelmed him at the Chateau d'If. "I am endeavoring," he thought, "to make this man happy; I look upon this restitution as a weight thrown into the scale to balance the evil I have wrought. Now, supposing I am deceived, supposing ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I should belong to a better Club or two," the uncle answered: "I should give an occasional dinner, and select my society well; and I should come out of that horrible garret in the Temple, sir." And so Arthur compromised by descending to the second floor in Lamb Court: Warrington still occupying his old quarters, and the two friends being determined not to part one from the other. Cultivate kindly, reader, those ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... comfortable feather-bed of a woman, whose mission in life it seemed to be to fend off from her brother all sharp corners, and to see that he took his food at the proper intervals and changed into the thick underclothing necessitated by the horrible English climate. ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... did not experience this feeling. He was absorbed in the horrible thought that the same Maslova, whom he knew as an innocent and beautiful girl ten years ago, could be guilty of such ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... horrible, from above as well as below. But Jerry, when he felt the first light twinge as Connie lifted the rope, foresaw what was coming and was ready for it. As he went down, he grabbed a firm hold on the branch on which he had stood, then he ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... Glyn. "Oh, hurrah! Here, Mrs Hamton, another patient for you to make decent.—I say, Singhy, she's just come from old Slegge. I'm afraid I've made his face in a horrible mess." ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... sands and into the dark tunnel, and hurried as fast as they could up the underground passage, expecting every moment to hear a footstep behind them and a voice demanding to know what they were doing trespassing upon the premises. At the top of the tunnel a horrible surprise awaited them. The door through which they had entered was shut and bolted. At first they could hardly believe their ill luck. They groped for the handle in the darkness, and pushed and pulled and turned and tugged, but all in vain. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... E'en as thy light, the life of night, Keeps o'er the earth its silent watch. O Goddess! keep my hands from blood! Blessing it never brings, and peace; And still in evil hours the form Of the chance-murder'd man appears To fill the unwilling murderer's soul With horrible and gloomy fears. For fondly the Immortals view Man's widely scatter'd simple race; And the poor mortal's transient life Gladly prolong, that he may lift Awhile to their eternal ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of death was simply horrible, and with the whole strength of her will she ever sought to banish it. To her it meant corruption, dust, nothingness. With a few drawbacks she had enjoyed life abundantly, and she clung to it with the tenacity of one who believed ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... ran through her—she felt but one thing—"This is a corpse. I am here alone with a corpse!—a corpse that rests on my lap!" With trembling hands she pushed the head away, until it rested on the ground. Then a feeling of horrible alone-ness came over her. Why had she sent the coachman away? What should she do here all alone with this dead man in the darkness? If only some one would come—but what was she to do then if anybody ...
— The Dead Are Silent - 1907 • Arthur Schnitzler
... along the shore seemed to dance in an uncertain light, my brain turned with my own breathless speed, my pursuers hissed forth their breath with a sound truly horrible, when all at once an involuntary motion on my part turned me out of ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... patron; but this morning my master rose late, still in a horrible bad humor. At noon Raoul arrived, also in a rage. They at once began to dispute, and such a row! why, the most abandoned housebreakers and pickpockets would have blushed to hear such Billingsgate. At one time my master seized the other by the throat and shook him like a reed. ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... met her, had rippled and run like a river. But he met her and loved her and lost her—and it was as if a great stone had been cast by a devil into his life's mid-current. The waves strove about it—the waves that had "come for their joy, and found this horrible ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... greeted her friends and acquaintances. Silence and solitude, and the close air that oppressed her, were things very foreign to her nature. In the dark night, when her distempered imagination conjured up horrible dreams, Nanny Swinton stole to her door, and bemoaned her bird, her lamb, whispering hoarsely, "Do her biddin', Miss Nelly; she's yer leddy mother; neither man nor God will acquit you; your burden may be lichter than ye trow." And Nelly was weary, and had sinful, mad thoughts of living to punish ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... of the kangaroo-rat is to be seen. Half a dozen graves marked each by a wooden cross or a rock monument are in sight. Who are they? Ask the simoom that sweeps like a cruel furnace blast over this forsaken region. To be lost in this desert means horrible suffering, phantom-seeing, and then death. The bodies of these unfortunates were merely found ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... and finish with one that was half empty, and then you would be charged for two kegs of beer. He would agree to serve a certain quality at a certain price, and when the time came you and your friends would be drinking some horrible poison that could not be described. You might complain, but you would get nothing for your pains but a ruined evening; while, as for going to law about it, you might as well go to heaven at once. The saloonkeeper stood in with all the big ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... will not believe it. The thought is too horrible—too dreadful. I wrong her to entertain it for an instant. Yet, who can be this lady the old pirate spoke of? He said she would soon be here. Would to heaven she ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... to hear you talk like that!—It is horrible—horrible! As if you didn't know! As if you couldn't understand! Sometimes I almost doubt whether papa does know, and then I think that if he did he would not be so cruel. But you understand it all ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... are thrice repeated in these two psalms. In the two former instances they are followed by a fresh burst of pained feeling. A moment of tranquillity interrupts the agitation of the Psalmist's soul, but is soon followed by the recurrence of 'the horrible storm' that 'begins afresh.' A tiny island of blue appears in his sky, and then the pale, ugly, grey rack drives across it once more. But the guiding self keeps the hand firm on the tiller, notwithstanding the wash of the water and the rolling of the ship, and the dominant will conquers at last, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... news of my opera.[188] Good Heavens! I should be content if I could write the tiniest little Liedchen. And an opera, now?... I firmly believe that it is all over with me.... I could as well speak Chinese as compose anything. It is horrible.... What I suffer from this inaction I cannot tell you. I should like ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... armor clashing bray'd Horrible discord, and the madding wheels Of brazen chariots rag'd; dire was the noise Of conflict. 381 MILTON: Par. Lost, ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... were really, now they regard them dispassionately, the happiest of their lives. That is a lie. And everybody, even he who says it, secretly knows it to be a lie. Youth is not glorious; it is shamefaced. It is a time of self-searching and self-exacerbation. It is a horrible experience which everybody is glad to forget, and which nobody ever wants to repeat. It knows no zest. It is a time of spiritual unrest, a chafing of the soul. Youth is cruel, troubled, sensitive to futilities. Only childhood and middle-age can be light-hearted about ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... crouches into the due thickets in consequence, not doubting but the King himself is for Baumgarten, and will be at hand presently. Principal relay-party, a squadron of Schulenburg's Dragoons, with a stupid Major over them, is not quite got into Baumgarten, when "with horrible cries the Pandour Captain with about 500 horse," plunges out of cover, direct upon the throat of it: and Friedrich, at Wartha, is but just begun dining when tumult of distant musketry breaks in upon him. With Friedrich himself, at this time, as I count, there might be 150 Horse; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... under them. The horses dashed madly down the slope, almost sending the carriage over at the next turn. Standish looked at his wife. She had apparently fainted, but in reality had merely closed her eyes to shut out the horrible sight of Pietro's face. Standish thrust his arm out of the open window, unfastened the door, and at the risk of his neck jumped out. Tina shrieked when she opened her eyes and found herself alone. Pietro now pushed in the frame of the front window ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... a most alarming degree. The disease itself is almost hopeless when once established, physicians being yet utterly unable to grapple with it; and while in Italy, Spain, and Egypt it has been known for a century, there is still a death-rate of over 60 per cent, and these deaths occur after most horrible suffering ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... age you will know why we endure what we dread—why we make friends of those who else would be most horrible foes: no, no— nothing can deliver me of this man but Death. And—and—" added Gawtrey, turning pale, "I cannot murder a man who eats my bread. There are stronger ties, my lad, than affection, that bind men, like galley-slaves, together. He who can hang you puts the halter round your neck and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in his second edition (p. 347) assigns it to Campbell, 'who,' he says, 'as well for the malignancy of his heart as his terrific countenance, was called horrible Campbell.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... eighteen, a crying shame which ought to be visited by some demonstration. Why should a professor marry? Was not Heine right, and were not some kinds of professors cumberers of the earth, as Achilles called himself when Patroclus had been killed? Horrible creatures all those whom the Swabians disliked! The professor of Roman law looked more like a disappointed hyaena than ever, and as for his colleague, the professor of Greek philosophy, he had begun by looking like Socrates, when he was born, and time had done its work with ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... meanest of man's towns, and situate certainly on the baldest of God's bays. It lives for herring, and a strange sight it is to see (of an afternoon) the heights of Pulteney blackened by seaward-looking fishers, as when a city crowds to a review—or, as when bees have swarmed, the ground is horrible with lumps and clusters; and a strange sight, and a beautiful, to see the fleet put silently out against a rising moon, the sea-line rough as a wood with sails, and ever and again and one after another, a boat flitting swiftly by the silver disk. This mass of fishers, this great fleet of boats, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... their offices. It may even so arrange things that when Captain Craig comes to the House of Commons at College Green he shall sit on an Irish-made bench, dine off a cloth of Belfast linen, and be ruthlessly compelled to eat Meath beef, Dublin potatoes, and Tipperary butter. In such horrible manifestations of Home Rule I do not discern the material for a revolution. Again, it may be proposed that in order to develop manufactures, municipalities and county councils may be given power to remit local rates on newly established ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... was being acted with frightful vividness there in memory. In that dreadful remembrance, her spirit was rent asunder anew by realization of that which had become her portion.... It was then, as once again the horrible injustice of her fate racked consciousness with its tortures, that the seeds of revolt were implanted in her heart. The thought of revenge gave to her the first meager gleam of comfort that had lightened her moods through ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... death; but never did my blood desert my veins and settle so' around my heart, never did such a sickening sensation possess me, as when standing in that car with my beautiful mare before me marked with those horrible symptoms, I made that discovery. My knife, my sword, my pistols even, were with my suit in the care of my friend, two hundred miles away. Hastily, and with trembling fingers, I searched my clothes, the lunch-basket, my linen; not even a pin could I find. I shoved open the sliding door, and ...
— A Ride With A Mad Horse In A Freight-Car - 1898 • W. H. H. Murray
... a murderess, a thief!" he cried. "Not I! I have suffered enough for my folly. I will go and tell the truth to-morrow. It was you who killed him. You did it in the cab and stole back to his rooms to rob—afterwards. Horrible! Horrible!" ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Jesus it is not necessary to recall the harrowing details recorded by Josephus (Wars, vi, 3:4), when a frenzied mother roasted her own child, and in the mockery of desperateness reserved the half of the horrible meal for those murderers who daily broke in upon her to rob her of what scanty food had been left her; nor yet other of those incidents, too revolting for needless repetition, which the historian of the last siege of Jerusalem chronicles. But how ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... waxes daily more audacious? They have desecrated our sanctuaries, unsettled the dull minds of the people, and conjured up amongst them a spirit of delusion. Impure spirits have mingled among the insurgents, horrible deeds have been perpetrated, which to think of makes one shudder, and of these a circumstantial account must be transmitted instantly to court. Prompt and minute must be my communication, lest rumour outrun my messenger, ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... groaned; and cried Joris, 'Stay spur! Your Roos galloped bravely, the fault's not in her, We'll remember at Aix'—for one heard the quick wheeze Of her chest, saw the stretched neck, and staggering knees, And sunk tail, and horrible heave of the flank, As down on her ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... make use of the confessional for a love confidence. She may perhaps give herself up to the enjoyment of sentiments which are not devoid of peril, but there is always a certain degree of mysticism about them which is not to be conciliated with anything so horrible as sacrilege. At all events, in this particular case, the girl was so shy that the words would have died upon her lips, and her passion was a silent, inward, and devouring fire. And with all this, she was compelled to see him every day and many times a day; young and handsome, always ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... drunkennesse"—as "disabling both persons and goods"—and in conclusion declares it to be "a custome loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black and stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of ...
— An Essay on the Influence of Tobacco upon Life and Health • R. D. Mussey
... horrible denouement commenced. The pretended count stopped, and crossing his arms on his breast, said sternly—'Monsieur Olivier de ——, you must be very rich to stake so glibly such enormous sums. Of course you know your fortune and can square yourself with it; but, however ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... or denizen of hell, I charge thee, thing of evil, to confess Why thou hast thus disturbed my sore distress. Why hast thou burst my chamber's bolted door Where guest unbidden never trod before? Break this suspense, so horrible and still! Declare thy tidings, be they good or ill, Be thou from Heaven or from the realms below. I charge thee speak, be thou a friend or foe; Break thou thy silence, ominous and deep, Or hence! Pursue thy way and let ...
— Mountain idylls, and Other Poems • Alfred Castner King
... thus been exposed for fully five hours, when von Schalckenberg at length stood beside him, and his body was completely hidden beneath a swarming mass of ants, the collective movements of which suggested a horrible wave-like creeping movement to the surface of the body. Apart from this, however, an occasional writhing of the frightfully swollen form and limbs showed that life and feeling still remained. But it was, perhaps, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... tedious flow, With looks demure, and silent pace, a Dun, Horrible monster! hated by gods and men, To my aerial citadel ascends, With vocal heel thrice thundering at my gate, With hideous accent thrice he calls; I know The voice ill-boding, and the solemn sound. What should I do? or whither turn? ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... whitened the village of Batz and rippled on the roofs of Croisic with pitiless brilliancy, filled Camille's dreaming mind for days together. She seldom looked to the cool, refreshing scenes, the groves, the flowery meadows around Guerande. Her soul was struggling to endure a horrible inward anguish. ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... the village of Evionnaz appeared in the midst of this sterile region. The hardest heart would have been moved to see this hamlet, lost among these horrible solitudes. The old man sped on, and plunged into the deepest gorge of the Dents-du-Midi, which pierce the ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... going to give her up. I had had hard work enough getting her. Besides, the atmosphere up there was horrible. It was necessary, first of all, to get her down to the foot of the cone, where she could have pure air, and then resuscitate her. Therefore I directed the guides to take down Ethel in a chair, while I carried down the child-angel. They had to carry her down over the lava blocks, ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... "That would be horrible, wouldn't it? Well, personally I fail to see why Fagin is any more of a scoundrel than some of these other fellows in gilt epaulets. However, I've not come to that point yet. The fact is I have a private affair to ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... more terrible than a human soul grown powerful in sin, and left to the horrible machinations of the evil one, and its own evil promptings. Demons developed from germs that might have produced seraphs, become rank growths, drinking in the healthful stimulants of life and reproducing them in hideous forms ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... negroes, and to intermingle with them; or, remaining isolated from them, to keep them in a state of slavery as long as possible. All intermediate measures seem to me likely to terminate, and that shortly, in the most horrible of civil wars, and perhaps in the extirpation of one or other of the two races. Such is the view which the Americans of the south take of the question, and they act consistently with it. As they are ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... knows you as his friend, in whatever state of mind he may be, he will not harm you, though a stranger would run considerable risk. The duration of this bulling depends entirely on what work they are doing; camels running in the bush without work will remain perhaps three months on season, and a horrible nuisance they are too, for they fight anything they come across, and will soon turn a peaceful camp of unoffending camels into a pandemonium. When in this state they will neither eat, drink, nor sleep, and ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... man spoke or moved, but all watched with a horrible fascination as the creature removed its dirty neckcloth and its head rolled on its shoulder. For a minute it paused, and then, holding the rag ...
— Light Freights • W. W. Jacobs
... children the risk would appear ten times more terrible, the consequences ten times more awful. The children themselves would have to grow up without family and without friends. The husband, cut off from intercourse with other men, would be thrown back upon himself. Husband and wife, with this horrible load laid upon them, would inevitably grow to loathe and hate the sight of each other. The man would almost certainly take to drink: the woman—but we must not follow this line any further. The situation lasted only so long as to give the wife a glimpse ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... to the basement to see what he could do with the refractory machinery, for although the elevator people had been telephoned to, their men had not yet put in an appearance. Pat's contribution was to create a horrible din by hammering on every pipe he came to, stopping at three-minute intervals to yell, "Can ye be ...
— Betty Gordon in Washington • Alice B. Emerson
... trees, in the gossamer cobweb there among the bushes jeweled lightly in dew, in the faint, sweet chirp of a drowsy bird above his head—but the moon-ray which lingered in the heart of the wild geranium would presently cascade through the trees to light the horrible thing of lead which had menaced the life of ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... exhaled from the vapors of the Ganges, frightful despair stalked over the earth. Already Chateaubriand, prince of poesy, wrapping the horrible idol in his pilgrim's mantle, had placed it on a marble altar in the midst of perfumes and holy incense. Already the children were clenching idle hands and drinking in a bitter cup the poisoned brewage of doubt. Already things were ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... some idea of what the commander might be able to do with this Joseph Brant, whose name stood in my mind for all that was horrible in the way of cruelty, I asked how it was that General Herkimer could hope to influence one who was such a great enemy to the Whigs of the Mohawk Valley, and, in fact, to all white men save those who wore the ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis |
