"Repulsive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fatiguing, the torturers, after the operation, were ravenously hungry and required a deal of drink. They were sanguinaries of a mental stability not to be shaken, while now! But to return to your companions in sacrilege. This evening, if they are not maniacs, you will find them—doubt it not—repulsive lechers. Observe them closely. I am sure that to them the invocation of Beelzebub is a prelibation of carnality. Don't be afraid, because, Lord! in this group there won't be any to make you imitate the martyr of ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... New-York) a serial work under the title of London Labor and London Poor, similar in design to the sketches of trades and occupations a year or two ago printed in the Tribune. It is in as lively a vein as may be, but such an anatomy is unavoidably sometimes repulsive. The authors perhaps endanger the designed effect of their performance by attempting to invest it with the attractions of quaintness and humor. We quote from the second part the following description of coster-mongers in the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... soul, as singed a little the whiskers of Mrs Tabitha's faith; for, by this time she began to look upon Lismahago as a prodigy of learning and sagacity. — In short, he could be no longer insensible to the advances she made towards his affection; and although there was something repulsive in his nature, he overcame it so far as to make some return to her civilities. — Perhaps, he thought it would be no bad scheme, in a superannuated lieutenant on half-pay, to effect a conjunction with an old maid, who, in all ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... about that girl that was at once repulsive and sweet, a singular impudence mingled with pity, that I could not understand. If she had taken my hand in the street she would have inspired a feeling of horror in me, but it seemed so strange that a creature I had never seen should come to me, and without a word, ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... means that really large audiences, le gros public, are eagerly interested In the radical discussion of propositions which twenty years ago were only publicly maintained, and then in their crudest, least true, and most repulsive form, in obscure debating societies and little secularist clubs. Everybody, male or female, who reads anything serious at all, now reads a dozen essays a year to show, with infinite varieties of approach and of demonstration, that we can never know whether ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... indeed, nothing attractive in timidity, nothing loveable in fear. All weakness, whether of mind or body, is equivalent to deformity, and the reverse of interesting. Courage is graceful and dignified, whilst fear, in any form, is mean and repulsive. Yet the utmost tenderness and gentleness are consistent with courage. Ary Scheffer, the artist, once wrote to his daughter:-"Dear daughter, strive to be of good courage, to be gentle-hearted; these are the true qualities for woman. 'Troubles' ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... examining Mr Pickering with furtive side glances. He was not handsome, nor, on the other hand, was he repulsive. 'Undistinguished' was the adjective that would have described him. He was inclined to stoutness, but not unpardonably so; his hair was thin, but he was not aggressively bald; his face was dull, but certainly not stupid. There was nothing in his outer ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... dull yellow colour, being [166] shrivelled, and possessing a sweet faint smell, unlike the repulsive odour of the fresh leaves and bark. They have a somewhat bitter, gummy taste, and are sold in entire cymes, with the stalks. An open space now seen in Malvern Chase was formerly called Eldersfield, from the abundance of Elder trees which grew there. "The flowers were noted," says Mr. Symonds, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... of table manners are made to avoid ugliness; to let any one see what you have in your mouth is repulsive; to make a noise is to suggest an animal; to make a mess is disgusting. On the other hand, there are a number of trifling decrees of etiquette that are merely finical, unreasonable, and silly. Why one should not cut one's salad in small pieces if one wants to, makes little sense, unless ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... courage to join the others in the inner room; and for some moments even I failed to identify the truly repulsive object about which I found them grouped. There was no false hair upon the face, but it was as black as any sweep's. The clothes, on the other hand, were new to me, though older and more pestiferous in themselves than ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... of his debts; they were the source indeed of his only real excitement, and he was grateful to them for their stirring powers. The usurers of Syria are as adroit and callous as those of all other countries, and possess no doubt all those repulsive qualities which are the consequence of an habitual control over every generous emotion. But, instead of viewing them with feelings of vengeance or abhorrence, Fakredeen studied them unceasingly with a fine and profound investigation, and found in their society a deep ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... Thorpe Green, where Branwell joined her as tutor in 1843, and where, owing to events that are still a mystery, she seems to have passed through an ordeal that left her shattered in health and nerve, with nothing gained but those melancholy and repulsive memories that she was afterwards to embody in 'Wildfell Hall.' She seems, indeed, to have been partly the victim of Branwell's morbid imagination, the imagination of an opium-eater and a drunkard. That he was neither the conqueror nor the villain that he made his sisters ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... It would seem that anger is the most grievous sin. For Chrysostom says [*Hom. xlviii in Joan.] that "nothing is more repulsive than the look of an angry man, and nothing uglier than a ruthless* face, and most of all than a cruel soul." [*Severo. The correct text is Si vero. The translation would then run thus . . . "and nothing uglier." And if his ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... think Davy Hull will make a career?" asked Jane. She had heard from time to time as much as she cared to hear about the world of a generation before—of its bareness and discomfort, its primness, its repulsive piety, its ignorance of all that made life bright and attractive—how it quite overlooked this life in its agitation about the extremely problematic life to come. "I mean a career ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... characters who had already figured in the play, a tall, handsome, athletic gentleman dressed in the fashion, attended by a slim-figured lad who was as refined in dress and appearance as the little girl clinging to her mother, who was mournfully hideous in her rags and repulsive poverty. These two, the gentleman and the lad, prevented the attempted suicide, and after a tableau on the bridge where the audience learned that the man and woman were brother and sister, the scene was transferred to the interior of one of the slum tenements in the East Side of London. Here ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... with a leering, repulsive face, with her feet planted firmly on her mattress, her knees elevated, her long, ape-like arms closely embracing these—her fingers, strung with brass and silver rings, intertwined ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... disliked people heartily; estimating them apparently from considerations entirely irrespective of age, or sex, or personal appearance. Sometimes, the very person who was thought certain to attract her, proved to be absolutely repulsive to her—sometimes, people, who, in Mr. Blyth's opinion, were sure to be unwelcome visitors to Madonna, turned out, incomprehensibly, to be people whom she took a violent liking to directly. She always betrayed her pleasure ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... picturesque costume and carrying their infants in a cumbersome and unwieldy cradle slung on their backs. It was a very varied assortment of babies which was presented to the doctor, many of the Turkish children being so emaciated and such a mass of repulsive sores, that many were sent away as too weak. Most of them shrieked with fear, but a few came up smiling, one and all comforted by their protector, either Turk, child, or fond mother. The fathers invariably showed the most distressed concern. It was a comical ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... any confidence in me, Cornelli? Tell me, do you think that I would do anything that would make you repulsive in the eyes of everyone? Do you believe that? I know you don't, child!" Cornelli ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... The editor was a busy man, and exchanged no words, except such as were necessary, with him. The boy was faithful, doing all that he was bidden, promptly and to the best of his ability, but he was ragged, and so dirty as to be positively repulsive. This annoyed the editor; but, as he was no worse in this respect than most of the boys of his class, the busy man did not urge him to improve his personal appearance, much as he would have enjoyed the change. But one morning the boy came in with clean face, hands, and garments. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... religion is good enough for me." He despised her religion, and that of the Friars Gray who punished boys to make them good. His mind turned inward—he became silent, secretive, self-centered, and his repulsive exterior served him well as a tough husk to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... love-inspiring eyes now became blood-shot, furious orbs, which excited fear and disgust in the mind of the beholder; whilst her former roseate hue and milk-white skin assumed a loathsome greenish tinge. Seeing herself thus transformed into so repulsive an object, Medusa fled from her home, never to return. Wandering about, abhorred, dreaded, and shunned by all the world, she now developed into a character, worthy of her outward appearance. In her despair ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... truth, Miss Walton," he replied, a little nettled, "I have no sympathy with that style of men. To me they are very repulsive and ridiculous. They remind me of the breathless, perspiring politicians of our time, who button-hole you and assert that the world will come to an end unless John Smith is elected. To me, the desperate earnestness of people who imagine it their mission to set the world ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... we see in no other aboriginal race in India. Like the gipsies of Europe they are noted for the symmetry of their limbs; but their offensive habits, dirty clothing and filthy professions give them a repulsive appearance, which is heightened by the reputation they have of kidnapping children and frequenting burial-grounds and places of cremation.... Familiar with the use of bows and arrows and great adepts ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... on you, since you are too clever to raise the fool's cry of paradox whenever I take hold of a stick by the right instead of the wrong end. Why are our occasional attempts to deal with the sex problem on the stage so repulsive and dreary that even those who are most determined that sex questions shall be held open and their discussion kept free, cannot pretend to relish these joyless attempts at social sanitation? Is it not because at bottom ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... Oh, how disheartening was Mr. Huckaback's reception of him! That gentleman, in answering the modest knock of Titmouse, suspecting who was his visitor, opened the door but a little way, and in that little way, with his hand on the latch, he stood, with a plainly repulsive look. ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of the winnings at cards and their destination. But he was beginning to wish that the very best construction of everything that Mr. Farebrother did should be the true one. The Vicar's frankness seemed not of the repulsive sort that comes from an uneasy consciousness seeking to forestall the judgment of others, but simply the relief of a desire to do with as little pretence as possible. Apparently he was not without ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... feared the glance of his eye nor the sound of his voice. A quiet confidence had established itself between them, and she really loved him. It was impossible for her to dwell beside a human being, not absolutely repulsive, without pouring some of the riches of her affection upon him. As for him, Gladys herself had not the remotest idea how he regarded her, did not dream that she had awakened in his withered heart a slow and all-absorbing affection, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Destruction. According to Protestant conceptions there was a very simple solution of the difficulty: the Nonconformists had simply to create a new Church for themselves, and worship God in the way that seemed good to them. But to the Russians of that time such notions were still more repulsive than the innovations of Nikon. These men were Orthodox to the backbone—"plus royalistes que le roi"—and according to Orthodox conceptions the founding of a new Church is an absurdity. They believed that if the chain of historic continuity were once broken, the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... doctrine; and, to begin with, we may state with the utmost frankness that nothing is easier than to interpret the {24} conception of Divine immanence in such a manner as to make it appear either ludicrous or hateful or simply meaningless—in any case repulsive from the religious point of view. This, to come straight to the point, is what is bound to happen when God's indwelling in man is explained as meaning that man is de facto one with his Maker. What could the general reader ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... never faltered, doing the most repulsive and arduous work day by day, close to the thunder of guns, or under the constant menace of the taube whose favorite quarry is the hospital full of ill and wounded, and of pretty women whose torn bodies even in imagination satisfy the perversities ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... they have made, and they not infrequently have the bad taste to explain with wearisome prolixity the ways and the means whereby those conquests were wrought; as, forsooth, an unfeeling huntsman is forever boasting of the game he has slaughtered and is forever dilating upon the repulsive details of ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... dubious and unpleasant aspect, calculated to create more distrust than seemed desirable to their owner. Every effort, however, to disguise their expression only rendered them the more forbidding and repulsive. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... about this girl at once repulsive and sweet, a singular boldness mingled with pity, that I could not understand. If she had taken my hand in the street she would have inspired a feeling of horror in me; but it seemed so strange that a creature I had never seen should come to me, and, ...
— Child of a Century, Complete • Alfred de Musset
... clean linen on my bed and on my person, too," Wilford said, "for Katy is coming, and I must not look repulsive." ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... independent of the represented individual, can possibly make a beautiful picture out of an ugly man; while the art which deals only with such visible peculiarities as are inherent in the individual, has no kind of outlet, is cornered, and can make of a repulsive original only a repulsive picture. The analogy to this we have already noticed in sculpture: antique sculpture, considering only the linear bosses which existed equally in the living man and in the statue, could not afford to represent plain ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... remarked, to fire on an American ship, didn't console anybody, and his further assurance that the matter would not be allowed to rest there left them cold. They felt too sure that in all probability they themselves were going to rest there, down underneath that repulsive icy water, after a struggle that was going to ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... boy, with his repulsive countenance, shambled out of his place into the middle of the room. Mr. Rose swept him with one flashing glance. "That is the boy," thought he to himself, "who has been like an ulcer to this school. These ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... train, but for a long time he goes on muttering, sighing and clearing his throat.... The cold air in the railway van grows thicker and more stifling The pungent odor of fresh dung and smoldering candle makes it so repulsive and acrid that it irritates Yasha's throat and chest as he falls asleep. He coughs and sneezes, while the old man, being accustomed to it, breathes with his whole chest as though nothing were amiss, and merely ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... you use to describe the feeling of the North in relation to slavery. One gentleman says that the North abhors it, and the use of the term has excited much comment. I may be still more unfortunate, but it is my duty to say that you cannot present an idea more repulsive to the northern mind or the northern conscience, than that of making the North responsible for the existence, expansion, growth, extension, or any thing else relating to slavery. Right or wrong, this sentiment has taken a firm hold of the northern mind. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... already shewn that the difference of climate and of industry, proceeding from that cause, inseparable from such vast domains, and which under other systems might have a repulsive tendency, can not fail to produce with us under wise regulations the opposite effect. What one portion wants the other may supply; and this will be most sensibly felt by the parts most distant from each other, forming thereby a domestic market and an active intercourse ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Monroe • James Monroe
... take up or lay down the burden of his thoughts in precisely the same way. The Duchess possessed the faculty of standing aloof from herself; she could look on as a spectator at the crash when it came, instead of submitting to be buried beneath. This was certainly great, but repulsive in a woman. When she awoke in the morning she collected her thoughts; and by the time she had begun to dress she had looked at the danger in its fullest extent and faced the possibilities of terrific downfall. She pondered. Should she take refuge in a foreign country? Or should she go to ...
— The Collection of Antiquities • Honore de Balzac
... pupils, wrote, on what authority I know not, a report in these words: 'Concerning Girolamo Cardano, I am told that he taught in this place, but got no pupils, always lecturing to empty benches: that he is a man of evil life, ill regarded by all, and little less than a fool, repulsive in his manners, and entirely unskilled in medicine. After he had promulgated certain of his opinions he found no one in the city who would employ him, nor did ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... as mere varieties or echoes of masculine characters, a Medea or Clytemnestra, or a vindictive Hecuba, the mere tigress of the tragic tiger, but female characters that had the appropriate beauty of female nature; woman no longer grand, terrific, and repulsive, but woman "after her kind"—the other hemisphere of the dramatic world; woman, running through the vast gamut of womanly loveliness; woman, as emancipated, exalted, ennobled, under a new law of Christian morality; woman, the sister and coequal ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... no dread of these two months. Mary was not so repulsive and unsisterly as Elizabeth, nor so inaccessible to all influence of hers; neither was there anything among the other component parts of the cottage inimical to comfort. She was always on friendly terms with her brother-in-law; ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... my thoughts on the relations of imaginative art in all its forms with science. The subject which in the hands of the scientific student is handled decorously,—reverently, we might almost say,—becomes repulsive, shameful, and debasing in the unscrupulous manipulations of the low-bred ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the way for a glimpse of Matty. Cousin Serena had never seen her; but I was not afraid to have her do so, unpromising object for one's charitable sympathies though she certainly was, for, the more helpless and repulsive-looking, the more would cousin Serena's ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... of the tumble-down shacks near the sea we found the Sultana, Inchy Jamela, mother of the present Sultan, who had preceded her son to Sulu on a little visit. She was a most repulsive old hag, blear-eyed and skinny with blackened teeth, from which the thin lips curled away in a chronic snarl, but she rose on her elbow from the couch where she was reclining, and shook hands in good American fashion. Then she ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... though the reasons for arriving at it seem irresistible. The formation of systems out of this matter implies a change of some kind with regard to the condition of the heat. Had this power continued to act with its full original repulsive energy, the process of agglomeration by attraction could not have gone on. We do not know enough of the laws of heat to enable us to surmise how the necessary change in this respect was brought about, but we can trace ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers
... suspicious. She determined with her next admirer to pursue a system diametrically opposite to that which she had followed with the marquis; she had shown him attractive complaisance; she was now prepared to display the repulsive haughtiness becoming the representative of two hundred thousand pounds: she had completely adopted Lady Pierrepoint's maxim. That a lady should marry to increase her consequence and strengthen ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... should have addressed herself to such an assembly. Why did she not leave it to him or her father! If it was not degrading enough to appear before such a canaille, surely to sing to them was! How could a woman of refinement, justifiable as was her desire for appreciation, seek it from such a repulsive assemblage! But Vavasor would have been better able to understand Hester, and would have met the distastes of the evening with far less discomposure, if he had never been in worse company. One main test of ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... this courtroom with a feeling of depression. There is little enough romance attached to crime. In the Night Court, where vice is on continuous parade and crime only an occasional visitor, the spectacle one beholds is repulsive to the ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... destroy the farmer's love for, and pride in, his occupation, until farm work becomes a repulsive drudgery, and he flies to the city for a more congenial employment. Is it then, under the circumstances, any wonder that the farmers' sons should become dissatisfied with the occupation of their birth? That in company with their sisters and sweethearts they should be determined, at all hazards, to ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... you, oh Clyone," Dantor was saying, "To people of his world the very thought of such a woman as yourself is repulsive. A murderess he would call you! Their reactions to the taking of human life are entirely different from those of the Llotta. They are—you will pardon my saying it—more like those of the Rulans. The Llotta hold life cheap; they hold ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... instrument of controversy—when facts came to be acknowledged, no longer because they were useful, but simply because they were true. Religion had no occasion to rectify the results of learning when irreligion had ceased to pervert them, and the old weapons of controversy became repulsive as soon as they had ceased ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... spending that grieved Peter greatly; not because he ever wanted her money now that Estcourt had been restored to its old splendour and set going again for their boy, but because meanness about money in a woman was something he could not comprehend—something repulsive, unfeminine, contrary to her nature as he had always understood it. He left off making the least suggestion about Anna's education or the household arrangements; everything that was done was done of Susie's own accord; and he spent more and more time in Devonshire, and grew more and ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... might be ransacked in vain for a more repulsive saying than this, that "A man must swallow a toad every morning if he wishes to be quite sure of finding nothing still more disgusting before the day is over." We cannot be surprised to hear of the lady who said that a conversation with Chamfort in the morning made her melancholy ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... those who resorted to such theories about animal worship could have nothing to do with calling the system into existence. We may be sure that a refined and cultivated people did not take up animal worship and cling to it, in spite of its repulsive features, with such tenacity as the Egyptians did, because of a speculative idea of the likeness of certain beasts to certain gods, or to express pantheistic views of the emanations of deity in animal forms. The system, in fact, cannot have sprung up after the Egyptians ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... Venetian, from your fan to the ridiculous little crepe shawl you wore because an Italian prince had told you that centuries were usually needed to teach a woman how to wear a shawl, but that you had been born with the art, and the shoulders! Anything but a watery street was repulsive to you. Cobblestones? 'Ordinario, duro, brutto! A gondola? Ah, bellissima! Let me float for ever thus!' You bathed your spirit in sunshine and colour; I can hear you murmur now, 'O Venezia ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... unpopular? Had he boils, like Job? Was he an undesirable citizen? Was he a German, or an Austrian, or a Turk? Was he inflicted with some loathsome disease? Was he a plague? Had some false reputation preceded him into the community? Had he a cantankerous disposition? Was he repulsive in appearance? Was he mean, stingy? Was he stupid, ignorant, uneducated, brainless? No, personally he could not plead guilty of acquaintance with any of the above disqualifications. Among the archives ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... employment are such as have influenced, and probably determined, the Americans from that time to the termination of the last war (1812-1815) with Great Britain—that is, the impossibility of keeping them neutral; the fear of their joining the enemy; while the customs of savage warfare are so repulsive to all the feelings of humanity and pride of the soldier, that it would seem no palliation could be received for the crime of having sanctioned them by example. Indians are active and serviceable when properly employed. They are the best defence against Indians. Acquainted from their ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... only difference that an ordinary observer would have noticed was a certain degree of open candour, straightforward daring, in the bold, ferocious expression of his face, which rendered him less repulsive than his low-browed associates, but did not by any means induce the belief that he was a hero. This look was, however, the indication of that spirit which gave him the pre-eminence among the crew of desperadoes who called him captain. He was ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... will face any social emergency you can mention with you. I am acquainted with a whole world in which Philip Ammon is keenly interested, that you scarcely know exists. I am not afraid to face any audience you can get together anywhere with my violin. I am not repulsive to look at, and I have a wholesome regard for the proprieties and civilities of life. Philip Ammon never asked anything more of me, ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... commonly were highly educated men, accustomed to all the refinements of life—some of them of noble families—and we can only measure their devotion to the cause of religion when we realize the contrast between their native surroundings and the repulsive savagery into which they plunged when they went among the Indians. Think of such a man as {150} Father Le Jeune, cultivated and high-minded, exiling himself from his white brethren for a whole season, ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... their scanty stores were exhausted, and not a drop of water remained: then their tongues were loosened, and they railed at the Almighty. Some wept like children, some cursed their fate: one man alone was speechless—a Spaniard with a wicked light in his eye, and a repulsive manner that had made trouble in the forecastle ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... perfect—a form a sylph might have envied—a voice sweeter than the Singing Fountain of Arabia, hands and feet the most perfectly beautiful the sun ever shone on, it was simply a moral and physical impossibility, then, they could be joined to a repulsive face. There was a remote possibility that it was a little less exquisite than those ravishing items, and that her morbid fancy made her imagine it homely, compared with them, but he knew he never would share in that opinion. It ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... Heep, begging everybody's pardon for taking the liberty of being in the world. There is nothing attractive in timidity, nothing lovable in fear. Both are deformities, and are repulsive. Manly ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... from her height (6 ft. 4 in.); born about 1769. First she tended cows on a farm that she was forced to leave after a fire; turned away on every side, because of her appearance, which was repulsive, she became, about 1791, at the age of twenty-two, a member of Felix Grandet's household at Saumur, where she remained the rest of her life. She always showed gratitude to her master for having taken her in. Brave, devoted and serious-minded, the only servant of the miser, she received as ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... sweet and dear to almost every heart. There is nothing repulsive in their tone, but, oh, what strength they give to the weary, waiting soul. The hope of never-ending happiness in a bright celestial world enables us to patiently endure the tortures and afflictions of this sin-cursed, ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... visits of Weber, on the other hand, seemed to have produced upon me those first sympathetic impressions which I have never since lost. In contrast to Sassaroli's repulsive figure, Weber's really refined, delicate, and intellectual appearance excited my ecstatic admiration. His narrow face and finely-cut features, his vivacious though often half-closed eyes, captivated ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... with women lies in the cultivation of right and happy relations with them. I suppose more men have been brought through this difficult period owing to the fact that association with women of refined natures made the thought of sexual irregularity seem repulsive, than by any other ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... cleanliness of fresh print or linen and the straight serviceable lines of skirt and waist often contribute to make a plain woman fully as attractive as her prettier sisters. Thus Mme. Poussette, about whom there was never anything repulsive or vulgar, presented new features to the world in her exquisitely neat hospital garb; more than this, she liked her work, and gradually her expression grew less vacant; she left off humming and whispering to herself, and we leave ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... jangling of discordant church bells and rattling of vicious drums, Marseilles, a fact to be strongly smelt and tasted, lay broiling in the sun one day. In Marseilles that day there was a villainous prison. In one of its chambers, so repulsive a place that even the obtrusive stare blinked at it, and left it to such refuse of reflected light as it could find for itself, were two men. Besides the two men, a notched and disfigured bench, immovable from ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... heart with its insufferable horror. Uneasiness seized all present, and with a feeling of heavy weariness they awaited Lazarus' words, but he was silent, sternly and coldly, and his eyes were lowered. And as if for the first time, they noticed the frightful blueness of his face and his repulsive obesity. On the table, as though forgotten by Lazarus, rested his bluish-purple wrist, and to this all eyes turned, as if it were from it that the awaited answer was to come. The musicians were still playing, but now the silence reached ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... good thing in the ranks of their opponents, or of stating with common fairness any consideration that can tell against their cause, without acknowledging how serious and how inveterate has been the evil. It is this which makes it so unspeakably repulsive to all independent and impartial thinkers, and has led a great German historian (Herder) to declare, with much bitterness, that the phrase "Christian veracity" deserves to rank with the ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... everything. Tall and pretty she startled all by her slovenly habits. With her Witchcraft becomes a mysterious cooking up of some mysterious chemistry. From an early date she delights to handle repulsive things, to-day a drug, to-morrow an intrigue. Among diseases and love-affairs she is in her element. She will make a clever go-between, a bold and skilful empiric. War will be made against her as a ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... the morally diseased as the appropriate subjects of the benevolent labors of His disciples. No one is to be despaired of. We have no warrant to pass by any of our fellow-creatures as beyond the reach of God's grace and mercy; for, beneath the most repulsive and hateful outward manifestation, there is always a consciousness of the beauty of goodness and purity, and of the loathsomeness of sin,—one chamber of the heart as yet not wholly profaned, whence at times arises the prayer of a burdened and miserable spirit for deliverance. Deep ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... him in 1812, and said, "So you're back from Moscow, eh?" Mike was feeling thoroughly jaundiced. The future seemed wholly gloomy. And, so far from attempting to make the best of things, he had set himself deliberately to look on the dark side. He thought, for instance, that he had never seen a more repulsive porter, or one more obviously incompetent than the man who had attached himself with a firm grasp to the handle of the bag as he strode off in the direction of the luggage-van. He disliked his voice, his appearance, ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... has seen for herself—what you have already told me—that you have got over your first aversion to him. She knows that women as charming as you are, have over and over again married men far more personally repulsive than my brother. Lucilla! something which is not to be out-argued, and not to be contradicted, tells me that her return to England will be fatal to my hopes, if that return finds you and me with no closer tie between us than the ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... continue to exist, and those who practise it will be, as they are to-day, and more than to-day, the profiteers, the lucky ones, and the adventurers. Excessive wealth will be more repulsive than it is now; whether it will be less valued depends upon the state of public ethics, a topic which we shall have to consider later. It is probable that in defiance of all legislation wealth will turn itself into expenditure and enjoyment ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... gratitude to an excessive and haughty delicacy. Convinced that nothing can be great that it is great to despise, he no longer hesitated to accept Lady Tinemouth's bounty, but smothered in his breast the embers of a proud and repulsive fire, which, having burst forth in the first hour of his misfortunes, was ever ready to consume any attempt that might oppress him with ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... retrude[obs3]; abduce[obs3], abduct; send away; repulse. keep at arm's length, turn one's back upon, give the cold shoulder; send off, send away with a flea in one's ear. Adj. repelling &c. v.; repellent, repulsive; abducent[obs3], abductive[obs3]. centripetal Phr. like charges repel; opposite charges attract; like poles ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... reason myself out of my dislike, and it culminated a few weeks ago when I found that my sister was anxious to have her with us in the North again this autumn. As you remember, I came to you, and told you the facts. I made you understand how repulsive it was to me to think that this girl might be my child, and begged you to sift the matter as far as was possible, and to find out if there were not a chance that I was mistaken in thinking it was Countess Romaninov who had ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... fury hiss'd along the skies; Deep in the swelling bank was driven the spear, Even to the middle earth; and quiver'd there. Then from his side the sword Pelides drew, And on his foe with double fury flew. The foe thrice tugg'd, and shook the rooted wood; Repulsive of his might the weapon stood: The fourth, he tries to break the spear in vain; Bent as he stands, he tumbles to the plain; His belly open'd with a ghastly wound, The reeking entrails pour upon the ground. Beneath the hero's feet he panting lies, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... of uncertainty the white man's innate spirit of forbearance acted almost involuntarily. Dally had hitherto been a man of peace. The thought of shedding human blood was intensely repulsive to him. He lowered the butt of his gun, and held up his right hand in token ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... and shabby, his exterior weather-beaten and dirty, indicating continual exposure to the elements, and designating him as one who dwelt far from the habitations of men, and mingled not in the courtesies of civilized life. His countenance was bold and ferocious, and exceedingly repulsive, from its strongly marked expression of villainy. His face, which was larger than ordinary, exhibited the lines of ungovernable passion, and the complexion announced that the ordinary feelings of the human breast were in him extinguished. Instead of the healthy ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... paces to her neighbour's door, unless she had this blanket upon her. The hateful looking garment is the chief relic of her barbaric origin, and despite the desire which she always manifests to exhibit her personal charms at their best, she has no qualms in converting herself into a hideous, repulsive squaw, with this covering. If she be of a shy nature, she will cover her head with this garment when a stranger enters her abode; and many a curious visitor who has heard of the bright eyes and olive ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... path of his pursuers. Could he reach the water-side, the fugitive would find every boat at his service; while his pursuers, on coming up, found every water-man very busy and very gruff. But the wonder is, that, with this unjust and repulsive system of impressments, the British sailors were so loyal, and fought with the dogged courage that ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... hovered in grey clouds over the green hempfields. I was tormented by thirst. There was no water near: in Kolotovka, as in many other villages of the steppes, the peasants, having no spring or well, drink a sort of thin mud out of the pond.... For no one could call that repulsive beverage water. I wanted to ask for a glass of beer or ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... face, and it was made more repulsive by the scars and sticking-plaster. As our eyes met it almost seemed as if he were going to strike me with his hammer; but he threw it down, gave his great hand a rub back and front upon his apron, probably to make it a little blacker, and then gripped mine as badly as Uncle Jack ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... before they had cleared the Capes. Captain Girard now rented a small store in Water Street, near the spot where he lived for nearly sixty years, in which he carried on the business of a grocer and wine-bottler. Those who knew him at this time report that he was a taciturn, repulsive young man, never associating with men of his own age and calling, devoted to business, close in his dealings, of the most rigorous economy, and preserving still the rough clothing and general appearance of a ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... complete, the doctor wanted to visit an Esquimaux hut; a man who seeks information is capable of enduring anything; fortunately the opening of these huts was too small, and the enthusiastic doctor could not get through. It was fortunate for him, for there is nothing more repulsive than the sight of that crowd of living and dead objects, of seal's bodies and Esquimaux-flesh, decayed fish and unclean clothing, which fill a Greenland hut; there is no window to renew that suffocating air; there is only a hole at the top ...
— The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne
... of form, colour, and action very diverse from those he has seen before. It is the gecko or croaking lizard (Thecodactylus loevis), a nocturnal animal in its chief activity, but always to be seen in these places or in hollow trees even by day. Its appearance is repulsive, I allow, but its reputation for venom ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... should) that the great sinfulness of the nation has brought about this War, when it is the selfishness and ambition of one man and his servants who have brought this about, while our conduct has been throughout actuated by unselfishness and honesty, would be too manifestly repulsive to the feelings of every one, and would be a mere act of hypocrisy. Let there be a prayer expressive of our great thankfulness for the benefits we have enjoyed, and for the immense prosperity of this country, and entreating ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... haunts of men. The places he should seek are such as a deserted house, the foot of a tree, a forest, or a cave. Without allowing his practices to be known by others, or concealing their real nature by appearing to adopt others (that are hateful or repulsive), he should enter his own Self.[1338] By association with Yoga and dissociation from company, he should be perfectly equable, steadily fixed, and uniform. He should not earn either merit or demerit by means of acts.[1339] He should be always gratified, well-contented, of cheerful face and cheerful ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... mountaineer from being afraid of death, that he seems to take a savage pleasure in imagining it in its most horrible forms and dwelling upon its most repulsive and terrifying features, merely to have the satisfaction of triumphing over it in fancy. As an illustration of this I give below a part of another Chechense song called "The Song of Khamzat." Khamzat was a celebrated abrek, or Caucasian Berserker, who harried the Russian armed line of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... mishaps and successes, Defoe has gone much more deeply into the springs of action, and sketched a much richer page in the natural history of his species than in Robinson Crusoe. True, it is a more repulsive page, but that is not the only reason why it has fallen into comparative oblivion, and exists now only as a parasite upon the more popular work. It is not equally well constructed for the struggle of existence among ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... "ourselves" that we give and take. It is not what your friend does for you or gives to you that makes him your friend; but what he is to you. It is his personality that you have shared. And so there is something rather repulsive in quickly forgetting or throwing it away. People who make friends and lose them as the trees put out their leaves in spring to shed them in the autumn, are not quite human. The capacity to make friends—to make many friends—is a great power: the capacity to lose them ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... troubled days in which she lived; but she had caught the infection from him, as the whole family had done. She had listened to his words as though they fell from inspired lips: the pseudo-philosophical dogmas, which are to us both repulsive and ridiculous, were to her invaluable truths, begotten by reason, and capable of regenerating her fellow-creatures. Robespierre was to her, what her Saviour should have been; and he rewarded her devotion, by choosing her as the partner of ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... amasser of wealth, Turcaret, is himself the dupe of a coquette, who in her turn is the victim of a more contemptible swindler. Lesage, presenting a fragment of the manners and morals of his day, keeps us in exceedingly ill company, but the comic force of the play lightens the oppression of its repulsive characters. It is the first masterpiece of the eighteenth-century ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... her solitary confinement, unloved and complaining, might be considered a figure either repulsive or pathetic, according to the onlooker's point of view. Fortunately there are always a few big enough at heart to turn towards the world a face of affection rather than of criticism, to whom woe appeals ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... to see the latter substituted for the former. In proportion, therefore, as the Lapps have become enlightened (like all other savage tribes), they have become less interesting. Retaining nearly all that is repulsive in their habits of life, they have lost the only peculiarities which could persuade one to endure the inconveniences of a ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... when in truth it was but an unnatural growth of leaves, with no fruit of the season, nor even an edible bulb held over from earlier years, for such as it had of former fruitage was dried to worthlessness and made repulsive in its worm-eaten decay. The religion of Israel had degenerated into an artificial religionism, which in pretentious show and empty profession outclassed the abominations of heathendom. As already pointed out in these pages, the fig ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... until it seemed marvelous that the human skin could bear so much distention without disruption, All the old look of bright intelligence had been. driven from his face by the distortion of his features. His swarthy hair and beard, grown long and ragged, had that peculiar repulsive look which the black hair of the sick ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... How repulsive these envious, hypocritical people were! How she hated everything that threatened to estrange her lover's heart! To them also belonged the scoundrel who, she supposed, had betrayed the sale of the star to the Emperor. She resolved ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the largest. The men, who were heathens, were quite naked, but the women wore small aprons of seaweed. They didn't tattoo themselves, but many of them had their skins rough and hanging in flakes, which gave them a most repulsive appearance. This was in consequence of their spending much of their ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... done at last—and where there had once been Gypsy Nan, haglike and repulsive, there was now a stylishly, even elegantly, dressed woman of well under middle age. The transformation seemed to have acted as a stimulant upon Gypsy Nan. She laughed with nervous hilarity she even tried ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... before. He is the noblest man I have ever known,—so good, so clever, so pure in heart! His Cousin Marmaduke, who was there at the same time, paid me great attention, but I never liked him; there was always something repulsive to me in his black eyes; I never trusted him; and beside Arthur,—oh, it seemed like the contrast between night and day! I don't know why it was, Madame, but I never felt that he loved Arthur really, though Arthur had done a great deal ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... spider often forced itself upon him, and he fancied that the busy insect was spreading its quickly made web over his blinded eyes, which he was not to touch, yet over which he passed his hand to free them from the repulsive veil. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not proud,' is so eminently characteristic of his manner, and at the same time so weighty in the thought, and vigorous in the expression, that I would entreat you to insert it, though to modern taste it may be repulsive, quaint, and laboured. There are two sonnets of Russell, which, in all probability, you may have noticed, 'Could, then, the babes,' and the one upon Philoctetes, the last six lines of which are first-rate. Southey's 'Sonnet to Winter' pleases me much; but, above all, among modern ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... New Yorkers to such a degree that his engagement was extended over three years. Letty Devine led a gay, careless life; her husband had plenty of money, and she was introduced to pleasures that made the frowsy life of home seem very repulsive. Devine was kind to her, and continued to play the lover in his pompous style. She was proud of her man, too. He played Claude Melnotte for his benefit once, and she longed to say to the ladies in the theatre, "He belongs to me. How could she help being fascinated with ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... for me this evening?" It was the soft, amiable negro voice, like those I remembered from early childhood, with the note of docile subservience in it. He had the negro head, too; almost no head at all; nothing behind the ears but folds of neck under close-clipped wool. He would have been repulsive if his face had not been so kindly and happy. It was the happiest face I had ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... Stramen was a tall, powerful man, whose vigor fifty years had not impaired. His face was stern, though not repulsive, and free from any approach to vulgarity. A man of strong passions, yet the strongest of all was an unvarying love for his daughter, on whom seemed to have centered all the tenderness of which he was capable. On the present occasion, he put an end to further controversy by drawing Margaret ...
— The Truce of God - A Tale of the Eleventh Century • George Henry Miles
... members all under oath to spread unchastity, and all forbidden to leave offspring—I do not know how it may appear to others, but to me the design seems obvious. Famine menacing the islands, and the needful remedy repulsive, it was recommended to the native mind by these trappings of mystery, pleasure, and parade. This is the more probable, and the secret, serious purpose of the institution appears the more plainly, if it ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... flaring torch as a welcoming beacon to be seen afar by any vessel in distress. I glanced at the dangerous ring of coral reef round the island on which the ship had once struck, and then looked at the repulsive islander, who sat gazing at us with a savage leer. Although somewhat resembling a Papuan, as Hassan had said, we were soon destined to know what he really was, for the Arab, who had been glancing narrowly and suspiciously at the man, whispered to ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... express condition that it should not so be sold, but which was too weak to enforce its just reclamation against both Napoleon and ourselves—reduces itself pretty much to a choice between overreaching and violence, as the less repulsive means of compassing an end in itself both desirable and proper; nor does the attempt, by strained construction, to wrest West Florida into the bargain give a higher tone to the transaction. As a matter of policy, however, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... The repulsive ugliness of the early Christian paintings was not the consequence of any break in the tradition. There was no reason why the graceful drawing of the human figure should not have been transmitted, as well as the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... animals are kept there by the priests of the establishment, in order to induce a greater number of visitors. A calf was killed and thrown in among the scaly gentlemen, who very soon demolished it. I never saw anything so loathesome and repulsive as these monsters. ...
— Campaign of the Indus • T.W.E. Holdsworth
... abuse us. I do not think I love Garrison any the less for what he has said. His spirit of intolerance towards those who did not draw in his traces, and his adulation of those who surrendered themselves to his guidance, have always been exceedingly repulsive to me, weaknesses which marred the beauty and symmetry of his character, and prevented its symmetrical development, but nevertheless I know the stern principle which is the basis of his action. He is Garrison and nobody else, and all I ask is that he ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... whatever it may be, is the chief motive that moves me. It could draw me to fire; it could draw me to water; it could draw me to the rack, as it did martyrs of old; it could draw me to any death—to anything pleasing, or repulsive; but I am mistaken, misunderstood by people, and the future as well as the present generation may condemn me in their narrow views as being dishonest, as being revengeful, as being even bloodthirsty; but, Charles, when God did command Peter to slay, did he ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... for days, and compelled to eat bits of skin, the bones of ptarmigan up to the beak and down to the toe-nails, I felt no painful craving; but I have seen men who suffered so much that I believe they would have eaten any kind of food, however repulsive." ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... papa," she said; "I do not wish to see this unfeeling and repulsive man, unless when it is ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... of the waters was a sheet of glancing foam, while the air was filled with the blended sounds of the wash of the element, and the roar of the winds. Still there was nothing chilling or repulsive in the temperature of the air, which was charged with the freshness of the sea, and was bracing and animating, bringing with it the flavour that a seaman loves. After fully fifteen minutes' severe tugging at the oars, the barge drew near enough to permit the black mass ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... any such warning as Klesmer's she could not have thought it an attractive freedom to be thrown in solitary dependence on the doubtful civility of strangers. The endurance of the episcopal penitentiary was less repulsive than that; though here too she would certainly never be petted or have her susceptibilities consulted. Her rebellion against this hard necessity which had come just to her of all people in the world—to her whom all circumstances had concurred in preparing for something quite different—was exaggerated ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... voice of darkness was peculiar. It sounded old, yet of an age that had not outlived the devil of youth. Probably the invisibility of the speaker enhanced its effect. With most of the elements of pleasing, it was nevertheless repulsive. It was soft, fluent, polished, but savage license was not far off, hard held by a slender leash; an underlying suggestion of harsh discordance. The utterance, though somewhat rapid, was ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... chemical tests, I study instinct in its loftiest manifestations; you pry into death, I pry into life. And why should I not complete my thought: the boars have muddied the clear stream; natural history, youth's glorious study, has, by dint of cellular improvements, become a hateful and repulsive thing. Well, if I write for men of learning, for philosophers, who, one day, will try to some extent to unravel the tough problem of instinct, I write also, I write above all things, for the young, I want to make them love the natural history which you make them hate; and that is why, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... I say!" once more the Prince exclaimed with the sort of indefinable aversion which one feels at the sight of a repulsive insect which he cannot summon up the courage to crush with his boot. So convulsively did the Prince shudder that Chichikov, clinging to his leg, received a kick on the nose. Yet still the prisoner retained his hold; ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... scene is sufficiently repulsive, even terrifying, to come upon suddenly from the silent heart of the dark, repellent forest. But there is yet another setting to the picture, which shall render it complete in every hideous and horrifying detail. For the principal gate itself ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... he perceived that the girl was in sober earnest. Very naturally he hesitated. He was not given to bravado, and even without her assertion that the reptile was deadly poisonous, he would have loathed to touch so repulsive a creature. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... thing that makes leviathan repulsive, his foul smell: which is so strong that if it penetrated thither, it would render Paradise ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... paint exactly what he saw, he softened nothing and therefore his figures were repulsive, but Fra Bartolommeo's pupil gave promise of what ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... lower type, often a frog or a snake. And once, in Wallachia, he has been transferred from the animal to the vegetable world, and figures as a pumpkin. In every instance he is represented as being able to change at times his repulsive appearance for one of beauty, and this he generally does by doffing a kind of husk which when donned conceals his real form, and invests him with that of an inferior being. If this husk be destroyed during the temporary absence of its ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous
... something to eat, how happy I should be. And I cried. And a great red-faced man came out of the house, and took me in, and gave me something to eat. His name was Mike Mullholland, and he was good to me, and I liked him, and took his name. And he lived with a repulsive looking woman, in a little room he paid ten dollars a month for. He had two big dogs, and worked at day work, in a slaughter-house in Staunton street. The dogs were known in the neighborhood as Mullholland's dogs, and with them I used to sleep on the rags of ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... said by one of the ancients, if it could reveal itself to our eyes in a sensible form, it would excite in our souls feelings of inexpressible love. Vice is ugly when once stripped of the delusive fascination of the passions; the vicious excesses of the lower nature are ugly and repulsive as soon as the intoxication is over. Error is ugly too; there are no beautiful errors but those which contain a larger portion of truth than the prosaic verities, which are nothing else than falsehoods put in a specious way. Beauty therefore is the law of our feelings, ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... trousers, high shoes, and cotton stockings of a bluish grey. He had a cringing manner, but a very harsh voice; and his blandest smiles were so extremely forbidding, that to have had his company under the least repulsive circumstances, one would have wished him to be out of temper ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... her husband's room, where he was lying on the couch. He signed to her to close the door. The Marquis was the living image of his mother, except that her beautiful regular features became in his face bony and repulsive. ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... skulls before some palace in Dahomey. Other blocks like these swing more ominously yet at the ends of the shrouds, that still hang suspended, waving and creaking and jostling in the wind. Each year the ropes decay, and soon the repulsive pendants will be gone. Not so with the iron belaying-pins, a few of which still stand around the mast, so rusted into the iron fife-rail that even the persevering industry of the children cannot wrench them out. It ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Ho, ho!" harshly jeered this mysterious, evil creature. The black man had halted as Harry prepared to throw, but he showed no sign of hesitation. Though he stood still, he thrust his repulsive, leering face forward, as though to offer that face as ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... clefts and crevices of their temporary retreat, only to be mercilessly and fatally enveloped by the snaky, viscous tentacles of the ever-lurking octopus, for every hole and pool among the rocks contains one or more of these hideously repulsive creatures. ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... was one of the few Northern men, who go to the South and throw aside their honest mode of obtaining a living and resort to trading in human beings. A more repulsive-looking person could scarcely be found in any community of bad looking men. Tall, lean and lank, with high cheek-bones, face much pitted with the small-pox, gray eyes with red eyebrows, and sandy whiskers, ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... had long considered those authors useless whom the professor reprobated; but I returned not at all the more inclined to recur to these studies in any shape. M. Krempe was a little squat man with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance; the teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in favour of his pursuits. In rather a too philosophical and connected a strain, perhaps, I have given an account of the conclusions I had come to concerning them in my early years. As a child I ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... at the same time be relieved from the load of his personal unpopularity. His whole power would at once devolve on his widow; and the nation would probably rally round her with enthusiasm. If her political abilities were not equal to his, she had not his repulsive manners, his foreign pronunciation, his partiality for every thing Dutch and for every thing Calvinistic. Many, who had thought her culpably wanting in filial piety, would be of opinion that now at least she was absolved from all duty to a father stained with the blood of her husband. The whole ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... recalled the incident of the morning, which, in the bitterness of her mood, she had forgotten. Somehow or other the idea of quitting the country in his company seemed less repulsive to her than at first. He was rich, and she would no longer be obliged to support herself by a degrading occupation. After the first buzz of scandal and excitement at her elopement the world would cease to prattle, or if it did she would be in America and ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... place, he had no love for his client. He had been using him simply as a tool; it was time now to cast him aside since he could be of no further benefit to him. Besides, the old man had come to be annoying and repulsive, and he had no money to pay for legal services. Then, there was still an opportunity to recover some of the personal prestige he had lost in his bitter advocacy of Craft's cause before the jury. In short, he had deliberately resolved to desert his ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... the sea." The whole district was once the property of that human monster Pier-Luigi Farnese, duke of Parma, heir of Pope Paul the Third, of whose demoniacal cruelty and treachery the racy pages of Cellini's Memoirs give so vivid an account, and whose repulsive face has grown familiar to us from Titian's famous portraits in the gallery of Naples. It was the evil Pier-Luigi's descendant and heiress-general of the family, Elizabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain, who conveyed ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... portion of the great North American Continent there lies an arid and repulsive desert, which for many a long year served as a barrier against the advance of civilisation. From the Sierra Nevada to Nebraska, and from the Yellowstone River in the north to the Colorado upon the south, is a region of desolation and silence. Nor is Nature always in one mood throughout ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle
... strange idea," responded Ruth. "I can't say I think that of him, but I agree with you that there is something repulsive about him. And that seems a mean thing to say, after he has given us the use of ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope |
