"Repellant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is the nervous tissue and brain, immediately about and above the eyebrow. You remember how effectually I dissipated your pictures by the simple application of iced eau-de-cologne. Few cases, however, can be treated exactly alike with anything like rapid success. Cold acts powerfully as a repellant of the nervous fluid. Long enough continued it will even produce that permanent insensibility which we call numbness, and a little longer, muscular as ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... the perception that beauty itself is the true principle of fascination. Reducing their new theory to practise, the Greek artists turned their attention to perfecting the details of the art they had borrowed. To works originally repellant from their very crudeness, they supplied finish and perfection of the parts. The ideal was still before them; the grotesque monsters might fascinate the beholder, but, however skilfully executed, however perfected in finish, the impression produced was but ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... solid-set feet of sidewalk ending in square-toed curbstone, with an air about them as if they had thrust their hard hands into their wealthy pockets forever, with a character of arctic reserve, and portly dignity, and a well-dressed, full-fed, self-satisfied, opulent, stony, repellant aspect to each, which says plainly: "I belong to a rich family, ...
— The Ghost • William. D. O'Connor
... ending suddenly in the black shadow of the swamp. The observer of this dismal prospect leaned heavily on his arm, and cast his glance out along the beautified corruption of the canal. His eye seemed quickened to detect the smallest repellant details of the scene; every cypress stump that stood in, or overhung, the slimy water; every ruined indigo-vat or blasted tree, every broken thing, every bleached bone of ox or horse—and they were many—for roods around. As his eye passed them slowly ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... trees, and the upper part of two nearly perpendicular tiers of scarped rock, surmounted by an undulating and triangular-shaped summit. The upper tier commences at a height of six hundred feet from the level of the plain and, rising another 200 feet, extends dark and repellant round the entire circumference of the hill. Viewed from the outskirts of the town, the upper scarp, which runs straight to a point in the north, bears the strongest similarity to the side of a huge battleship, riding over billows long since petrified and ...
— By-Ways of Bombay • S. M. Edwardes, C.V.O.
... with that perfect, repellant courtesy against which there is no appeal, and passed on; had she seen—she did not, for she looked straight on and saw nothing—but had she seen the look of mingled hate and love which darkened over Sir Edwin's face, ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... of equipment are a small whetstone, a small hammer, matches, and some volatile oil, like citronella, lavender, wintergreen, or other black fly and mosquito repellant. It is almost suicidal to slap a mosquito on the back of your neck with a keen grafting knife in your hand. A supply of parowax and alcohol for the lantern's sake should ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... sitting with this brute!—will go on doing so, too, until it is too late to go down to the drawing-room!" Here I glanced at him over the back of my chair, and thought the general look of his attitude and appearance so offensive and repellant that at the moment I could gladly have offered him some insult, even a most ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... not unfrequently troubled with diseases of the skin, which are often supposed to be the itch: for these eruptions they generally use repellant external applications; this ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck
... 'Frederic Chopin wrote it.' One recognizes him in his pauses, in his impetuous respiration. He is the boldest, the proudest poet soul of his time. To be sure the book also contains some morbid, feverish, repellant traits; but let everyone look in it for something that will enchant him. Philistines, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... and picturesque personalities,—Clay, Adams, Calhoun, Jackson, and Webster. John Quincy Adams was a sort of exaggeration of the typical New Englander,—upright, austere, highly educated, devoted to the public service, ambitious, yet not to the sacrifice of conscience, but cold, angular, repellant. Says Carl Schurz in his Henry Clay—a book which gives an admirable resume of a half-century of politics: "He possessed in the highest degree that uprightness which leans backward. He had a horror of demagogy, and lest he should render himself guilty of anything akin to it, he would ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... Italian Middle Age and Dante, its great exemplar, found new interpreters in the Rossetti family; a family well fitted by its mixture of bloods and its hereditary aptitudes, literary and artistic, to mediate between the English genius and whatever seemed to it alien or repellant in Dante's system of thought. The father, Gabriele Rossetti, was a political refugee, who held the professorship of Italian in King's College, London, from 1831 to 1845, and was the author of a commentary on Dante which ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... frequently associate with and serve their earth friends, although the recipients of their benefactions are unaware of the fact. There would be very much more of this kind of guidance from the unseen, if, instead of being frightened, or repellant in their mental attitude toward the spirits, the great bulk of people were prepared to accept such assistance from the other side as perfectly natural and to ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... fine," Walter Tyrrel answered, grudgingly, in the tone of one who, against his will, admits an adverse point he sees no chance of gainsaying. "They're black, and repellant, and iron-bound, and dangerous, but they're certainly magnificent. I don't deny it. Come and see them, by all means. They're the only lions we have to show a stranger in this part of Cornwall, so you'd better make the ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... manifestations of the genius of their creators, are yet lacking in passion. This placid mood and amiability of style is shown by the comparatively slight employment of dissonances. By unthinking and uncultivated persons dissonances[147] are often considered as something harsh, repellant—hence to be avoided. But dissonances contain the real life and progress of music. They arouse, even take by storm our imaginations and shake us out of our equanimity. Consonant chords represent stability, satisfaction and, when over-used, inertia. The genius of the composer is shown in ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... covered only with a mass of shock hair, which hung down like pieces of tarred rope, and with the lower part of the face veiled by a black, stringy beard, was thrust far enough within to show the shoulders. Directly behind appeared another face, placed on a shorter body, but none the less repellant in expression, and the two were forcing their way into ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... Castle Marling, which was not a castle, you may as well be told, but only the name of a town, nearly contiguous to which was their residence, a small estate. Lord Mount Severn welcomed Isabel; Lady Mount Severn also, after a fashion; but her manner was so repellant, so insolently patronizing, that it brought the indignant crimson to the cheeks of Lady Isabel. And if this was the case at the first meeting, what do you suppose it must have been as time went on? Galling slights, petty vexations, chilling annoyances were put upon her, trying ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... for she unconsciously gave the impression that she had been more repellant than had actually been true. He soon checked himself, however, and said gravely, "Ella, you take these things ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... roads which, later in the morning, Madge had followed, he had frowned blackly at the sunrise and the waking birds, kicked viciously at little sticks and stones which chanced along his way. Never a smile had he for chattering squirrel or scampering chipmunk; fierce, repellant was the brown brow of the mountaineer, despite the glory of the morning, and black the heart within him with sheer hatred of Frank Layson ...
— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... life which are beautiful in themselves, scenes which we would have liked to live through, full of radiant happiness and joy; he does not eliminate from his picture of life that which is disturbing to the peace of the soul, repellant and ugly and immoral. On the contrary, all the great works of literature have shown us dark shades of life beside the light ones. They have spoken of unhappiness and pain as often as of joy. We have suffered with our poets, and in so far as the musical composer expresses the ...
— The Photoplay - A Psychological Study • Hugo Muensterberg
... and incisive. His manner to his superiors was quietly respectful, to his equals, somewhat distant, though without any trace of hauteur, and to his inferiors, gentle and sympathetic, or cold, stern, and repellant, accordingly as they won his approval or incurred his displeasure. He, like the skipper, was also a prime seaman, with a dauntless courage which verged very closely upon recklessness, though it never was allowed to actually merge ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... by the human species in the United States. It is said that this oatmeal porridge was introduced to the British prisons by the Scotch influence, and we think that none but hogs and Scotchmen ought to eat it. A mess more repellant to a Yankee's stomach could not well be contrived. It is said, however, that the highlanders are very fond of it, and that the Scotch physicians extol it as a very wholesome and nutritious food, and very ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... anguish, of insufferable torment! Was man formed "according to the image of Jehovah," to be crossed, thwarted, counteracted; to be forced in upon himself; to be the sport of endless contradictions; to be driven back and forth forever between mutually repellant forces; and all, all "at the discretion of another!"[A] How can men be treated according to his nature, as endowed with reason or will, if excluded from the powers and privileges of self government?—if "despotism" be let loose upon him, to "deprive him of personal ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... pavement, so as not to delay the opposing streams of the crowd, while it occurs to no man to honour another with so much as a glance. The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest becomes the more repellant and offensive, the more these individuals are crowded together, within a limited space. And, however much one may be aware that this isolation of the individual, this narrow self-seeking is the fundamental ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... two or three others at their wits' end; they had the best forces of the large city detective agencies completely baffled. They killed two detectives—one of whom, however, killed John Younger before he died—and executed another in cold blood under circumstances of repellant brutality. They raided over Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, even as far east as West Virginia, as far north as Minnesota, as far south as Texas and even old Mexico. They looted dozens of banks, and held up as many railway passenger ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... truth, I am not surprised that his people should still keep on seeking information; for Thomas Glahn was in many ways an uncommon and likable man. I admit this, for fairness' sake, and despite the fact that Glahn is still repellant to my soul, so that the bare memory of him arouses hatred. He was a splendidly handsome man, full of youth, and with an irresistible manner. When he looked at you with his hot animal eyes, you could not but feel his power; even I felt it so. A woman, they say, said: "When he looks at me, I am ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... Siebold we first knew intimately years after. I shall have more to say of him later, and also of the historian Gervinus, who, behind apparently repellant arrogance, concealed the noblest ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... she interrupted with a repellant gesture, "in the hope of receiving a little kindness, for which I was famishing, but I would rather you had stabbed me than have said what you have. Hush, not a word more. The brutal wrong has been done. Will you ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Lincoln, perceiving his earnest truthfulness and genuine qualities, forgave him his impertinence, nor ceased to regard him with the enduring affection one might have for an ardent, aspiring and lovable boy. He was repellant to Grant, who could not and perhaps did not desire to understand him.... To him the Southerners were always the red-faced, swashbuckling slave-drivers he had fancied and pictured them in the days ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... find himself in the most gloomy apartment he had ever beheld in his life. It was all covered with black—walls, ceiling, and floor were draped in black, and reminded him forcibly of La Masque's chamber of horrors, only this was more repellant. It was lighted, or rather the gloom was troubled, by a few spectral tapers of black wax in ebony candlesticks, that seemed absolutely to turn black, and make the horrible place more horrible. There was no furniture—neither couch, chair, nor table ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... inhabitants had been destroyed. Though maybe it had had its start, billions of years before, on the planets of another star. The thickets had seemed harmless. Was this another, different civilization, that had risen at last in anger, using its own methods of allergy, terrible repellant nostalgia, and mental distortions? ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... imminent peril from their captors, though, on the other hand, he was very far from feeling safe against harm. With a coolness that must have awakened admiration among the barbarians, the youth, standing in the middle of the group, folded his arms, and smilingly looked in the repellant faces, none of which were at a greater altitude ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... miles in front, which they could not even discern. The infantry went over the top throwing bombs and piled themselves up into mounds of silence. Nations far away toiled day and night in factories—and all that they might achieve this repellant desolation. The innocence of the project made one smile—a handful of women sailing from America to reconstruct! To reconstruct will take ten times more effort than was required to destroy. More than eight hundred years ago William the Norman burnt his way through the North ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson |
