"Revulsion" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I own I am a poor authority in such matters—that the recovery of her freedom had set her thinking again of that other man whom she loved, and that she was furious with herself for not being able to control a revulsion of feeling of which she was secretly ashamed. Who was the man? I had my suspicions—but it was needless to waste time in idle speculation. When I had converted her, she would, as a matter of course, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... the corridor, Hastings gave himself up to other thoughts than those of love. So strong is habit, so powerful vanity or ambition, once indulged, that this puny slight made a sudden revulsion in the mind of the royal favourite; once more the agitated and brilliant court life stirred and fevered him,—that life, so wearisome when secure, became sweeter when imperilled. To counteract his foes, to humble his rivals, to regain the king's countenance, ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were in splendid spirits, and ate their roast goose, potatoes, and hot bread with a gusto which far more delicate viands at home would fail to provoke. As the meal proceeded, and the merry jest went round, all feelings of fatigue, pain, and discomfort were lost in the revulsion of comfort which a full meal produces in a man of thoroughly healthy physique. How few of us in the crowded cities know, or indeed can appreciate, the pleasures of the hardy sportsman. To bear wet, cold, and discomfort; to exercise patience, skill, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... there may have been present no conflicting tendencies, and this particular idea may therefore have been allowed free and joyous expression. Today other thoughts may be in the ascendency so that we look upon the idea of yesterday with a feeling of revulsion. ...
— Initiative Psychic Energy • Warren Hilton
... described, I almost wished that it had been my hate, my anger which had brought those tell-tale marks out upon that livid skin. I should have suffered less. I should only have had to pay the penalty of my crime and not be forced to think of Carmel with terrible revulsion, as I was now thinking, minute by minute, fight with it as ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... of pearl button and gold watch-guard and polished shoe. No portrait by a great modern master could have presented him with more intensity, thrust him out of his frame with more art, as if there had been "treatment," of the consummate sort, in his every shade and salience. The revulsion, for our friend, had become, before he knew it, immense—this drop, in the act of apprehension, to the sense of his adversary's inscrutable manoeuvre. That meaning at least, while he gaped, it offered him; for he could ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... all our cupboards, and spying out cobwebs, and giving a little shriek at the discovery of a new loaf in our larder. She found out that one of her model cottagers had been eating new bread. She said it gave her quite a revulsion of feeling. And then when we went home she showed me her account-books and her medicine-chest. ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... figured that the fugitives had rested for a couple of hours. They had traveled eight miles through the blizzard without a fire, and his heart was filled with a sickening pain as he thought of Isobel Deane and the suffering he had brought to her. For a few moments there swept over him a revulsion for that thing which he stood for— the Law. More than once in his experience he had thought that its punishment had been greater than the crime. Isobel had suffered, and was suffering, far more than if Deane had been captured a year before ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... surprises. Through my whole ride and the indulgence in these thoughts I was conscious of a great inner revulsion against all I had intimated and even honestly felt while talking with the inspector. Perhaps this is what this wise old official expected. He had let me talk, and the inevitable reaction followed. I could ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... was what we should call a Ritualist. It was certainly not a conscious reaching out towards Rome: except on a Roman Catholic theory which might explain all our unrests by that dim desire. It knew little of Europe, it knew nothing of Ireland, to which any merely Roman Catholic revulsion would obviously have turned. In the first instance, I think, the more it is studied, the more it would appear that it was a movement of mere religion as such. It was not so much a taste for Catholic dogma, but simply a hunger for dogma. For dogma means the serious satisfaction of the mind. Dogma ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... before you begin. If you give up present pursuits impetuously, are you sure that present impulses will last? Are you quite certain that a day will not come when you will curse the hour in which you broke altogether with the world? Are you quite sure that the revulsion back again, will not be as impetuous as Herod's, and your hatred of the religion which has become a clog, as intense as it is ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... appeared to worse advantage; and Evelyn, fresh from her husband's air of unobtrusive neatness and distinction, was conscious of a sudden recoil—a purely physical revulsion; to which was added the galling thought that she owed her recent suffering and humiliation to her intimacy with a man who could look ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... inexplicable thing. Eager as man is to find his woman virgin, woman cares little about the similar thing in man. Only the very young, pure, inexperienced girl feels an instinctive revulsion from the real rou, but other women, according to Rochebrune, love a man in proportion to the number of other women who love or have loved him. This is difficult to understand, but it is a fact that a man has ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... paused to ask myself what I did there alone in the night-time. Sitting down, I covered my face with my hands as if to hide it more effectually than it could be hidden by night and the forest shadows. What horrible thing, what calamity that frightened my soul to think of, had fallen on me? The revulsion of feeling, the unspeakable horror, the remorse, was more than I could bear. I started up with a cry of anguish, and would have slain myself to escape at that moment; but Nature is not always and utterly cruel, and on this occasion she came to my aid. Consciousness ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... fact has nothing to do with the artistic meaning and is a concession to the gross senses of the reader. The story illustrates the method, rather than its successful application; for the physical horror is really greater here than the moral revulsion. In "The Minister's Black Veil" the object is more happily dealt with. It is to be noticed that Hawthorne did not invent these objects, he found them; and, in this case, he has used the tradition ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... the excessive importance attached to a possible future state: he looks upon this as a psychical stimulant, a day dream, whose revulsion and reaction disorder waking life. The condition may appear humble and prosaic to those exalted by the fumes of Fancy, by a spiritual dram-drinking, which, like the physical, is the pursuit of an ideal happiness. But he is too wise to affirm or to deny the existence of another world. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... and there, the very first thing they fell upon, looking portly and imposing in a fur coat, was the rubicund-faced Head of the Firm himself. "It is good," I thought, and supported myself for a moment by the hat-rack, for the revulsion of feeling produced a sudden faintness. He saw me, and sprang forward with a beaming yet respectful countenance. "It is very good," ...
— Doctor Therne • H. Rider Haggard
... represented all his interests and his whole experience; to White and Lee from the Potomac, the symbol of their province was the highest political entity they served, and they served it though they hated to pay the price. They agreed, says Jefferson, to change their votes, "White with a revulsion of stomach almost convulsive." [Footnote: Works, Vol. IX, p. 87. Cited by Beard, Economic Origins of Jeffersonian ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... a blessed provision of nature that at times like these, as soon as a man's mercury has got down to a certain point there comes a revulsion, and he rallies. Hope springs up, and cheerfulness along with it, and then he is in good shape to do something for himself, if anything can be done. When my rally came, it came with a bound. I said to myself that my eclipse would be sure to save me, and make me the greatest man in the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was assured them, they sank into each other's arms in an uncontrollable impulse of emotion. Maurice was sobbing violently, while big tears trickled slowly down Jean's cheeks. It was the natural revulsion of their overtaxed feelings after the long-protracted ordeal they had passed through, the joy and delight of their mutual assurance that their troubles were at an end, and that thenceforth suffering and they were ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... him and came towards him. In the sudden revulsion of feeling and his relief at knowing that they were safe Frank almost lost his head. A mad hope surged through him. He stretched out his arms imploringly to the great ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... too, John was really relieved by that terrible burst of confidence in his sister. It is a curious fact, that giving full expression to bitterness of feeling or indignation against one we love seems to be such a relief, that it always brings a revulsion of kindliness. John never loved his sister so much as when he heard her plead his wife's cause with him; for, though in some bitter, impatient hour a man may feel, which John did, as if he would be glad ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... popular legislator or the successful soldier might dare to encroach upon their liberties in the moment when the nation was intoxicated and dazzled with their genius, their prowess, and success; but a sudden revulsion of popular feeling, and an explosion of popular indignation, would overturn the one, and ostracism expel the other. Thus while inconstancy, and turbulence, and faction seem to have been inseparable from the democratic spirit, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... The revulsion of feeling in the crew of the Talisman was overpowering—a long, loud, tremendous cheer ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... From some tumultuous covert of this woodland, Thy whilom sphere and palace? Nun of the skies, In coy virginity of pulse, thy hands Repelled me when I sought to win thy lair, Fraternal, with no thoughts but humorous ones; And in thy chill revulsion, through thy skies, At my advance thy crystal home would fade, A ghost, a shadow, a film, a papery dream. Thou and thy moon were one. What is it now, Thy phantom paradise of gorgeous pearl, With ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... upon his shoulders, he might fall into the hands of the Signory, and be condemned to the fire as a wizard, or that, should the affair get wind, it might embroil him with his kinsfolk, or the like, which gave him pause. But then with a revulsion of feeling:— Shall I, quoth he to himself, deny this lady, whom I so much have loved and love, the very first thing that she asks of me? And that too when I am thereby to win her favour? No, though 'twere as much as my life is worth, far be it from me to ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... The revulsion was a very sadden one. Such changes of feeling are apt to be sudden in young people whose nerves have been tampered with, and Myrtle was not of a temperament or an age to act with much deliberation where a pique ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... coat—his border training in economy had become so strong that even in the moment of despair he would throw away nothing—and his hand in the pocket came into contact with something else, small, hard, and polished. Dick instantly felt a violent revulsion from despair to hope. ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... hesitated, afraid to speak. She had nerved herself to bear the worst, and I feared the revulsion of feeling would be too great. As I stood there silently looking down at her drawn, haggard face, I felt she would not have had strength to bear a fresh trial. If Susan had died Phoebe would not ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... afternoon, she had forced this quiet upon herself; but it could not go on indefinitely. Already the tug and wrench upon her nerves was slackening, and Miss Gannion's words brought the swift revulsion. The older woman shrank before the storm of passionate sorrow. Then she braced herself to bear it, for she realized that it was the flood which must inevitably follow the breaking down of the dykes that for months had pent in the seas of a daily and ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... view behind the porter and she felt a sudden revulsion against the thrill of interest and anticipation that had ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... heart a sort of feeling of horror, as though something was wrong, I could not tell what. All at once I felt a swift revulsion. There came over me the reaction, an icy calm. I felt all ardor leave me. ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... as the means of serving, not enslaving the race. And therefore, while he excused the crimes of the Revolution, on the score of the ignorance in which the people had been kept, their sufferings, and the natural revulsion against such painful down-treading, he regarded the counter acts of authority as a treachery to wisdom itself. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... The late disastrous monetary revulsion may have one good effect should it cause both the Government and the people to return to the practice of a wise and judicious economy both ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... of money. But how he suffered when those accounts did come in! Of course, there was nothing to be done but to apply to some long-suffering friend; denials of lunch and threadbare coats but nibbled at the amount—especially as a fast to-day often found revulsion in a festival to-morrow. To save was ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... 'Hyperion'; but precisely that revised Induction to 'Hyperion' which on the other argument is held to indicate how the poet's powers had been ravaged by disease and the pangs of unsatisfied love. On the technical side alone the Induction is of extraordinary interest. Keats's natural and proper revulsion from the Miltonic style, the deliberate art of which he had handled like an almost master, is evident but incomplete; he is hampered by the knowledge that the virus is in his blood. The creative effort ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... without any word or suggestion from me. He replied, "Oh, I am so sorry you did not remind me! You know how busy I am; I wish I had thought of it a little sooner, for only this afternoon I sent all the money I had to the bank, otherwise I would pay you at once." It is impossible to describe the revulsion of feeling caused by this unexpected statement. I knew not what to do. Fortunately for me my pan boiled up, and I had a good reason for rushing with it from the room. Glad indeed I was to get away, and keep out of sight until after ...
— A Retrospect • James Hudson Taylor
... slam and a flood of light; one of the shutters had blown open. Both started, glanced around, then faced each other again; but that noisy interruption had thoroughly aroused Sara. She looked at Jasper in this brighter light, and a quick revulsion of feeling swept over her. What was she doing? Would she lie ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... with tears, but a smile on her lips, radiant with new-found happiness, she told him how she had overheard the plans of Dunn and Brace, how she had stolen their conveyance to warn him in time. But here she stopped, dreading to say a word that would shatter the hope she was building upon his sudden revulsion of feeling for Nellie. She could not bring herself to repeat their interview—that would come later, when they were safe and out of danger; now not even the secret of his birth must come between them with its distraction, ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... few downstairs. Blanche and Aubrey agreed that they thought people would have been much happier, but, in fact, the joy was oppressive from very newness. Ethel roamed about, she could not sit still without feeling giddy, in the strangeness of the revulsion. Her father sat, as if a word would break the blest illusion; and Harry stood before each of them in turn, as if about to speak, but turned his address into a sudden caress, or blow on the shoulder, and tried to laugh. ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... that the feeling of Moses in regard to a future life was that expressed in the language of the Stoic, "It is the business of Jupiter, not mine;" or it may be that it partook of the same revulsion that shows itself in modern times, when a spirit essentially religious has been turned against the forms and expressions of religion, because these forms and expressions have been made the props and bulwarks ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... life, when love is once admitted to their hearts, there is no counter-check to its emotions, and no escape from its excitation. Aram, too, had just arrived at that age when a man usually feels a sort of revulsion in the current of his desires. At that age, those who have hitherto pursued love, begin to grow alive to ambition; those who have been slaves to the pleasures of life, awaken from the dream, and direct their desire to its interests. And in the same proportion, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and children to slavery, but later this sentence was revoked. Cases also occurred in which the law of war was not followed, but the conquered were spared. By retaliation they inflamed their own passions and went on from bad to worse until there was a revulsion of pure shame. Lysander put to death three thousand Athenians, captives, after the battle of AEgospotami, as reprisals for the barbarities executed by the Athenians against Sparta and her allies. The allies wanted to exercise ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... her bright hair falling down about her shoulders and beating against the animal's breast and knees as he ran, her stiffened fingers clutching his mane to keep her balance, her whole weary little form drooping over his neck in a growing exhaustion, her entire being swept by alternate waves of anger, revulsion and fear. ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... Lorraine and I: ah THEN, poor dear little Mother—! Upon my word I believe I'd go on lying low to this positive pitch of grovelling—and Lorraine, charming, absurd creature, would back me up in it too—in order precisely to save Mother such a revulsion. It will be really more trouble than it will be worth to her; since it isn't as if our relation weren't, of its kind, just as we are, about as ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... several peace organizations in America. He believes that after the present war there will be a complete revulsion of public opinion throughout the world in favor of peace. Never, he said, will there have been a riper moment for ...
— Paris War Days - Diary of an American • Charles Inman Barnard
... of that! But a certain revulsion of feeling had come over Theydon since the sheer brutality of the murder had been revealed. He failed to see now why he should be so solicitous for Forbes's welfare. No matter what private purpose the man might serve by concealing his visit to Mrs. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... how close on the heels of sin God's question treads! How God spoke, we know not. Doubtless in some fashion suited to the needs of Cain. But He speaks to us as really as to him, and no sooner is the rush of passion over, and the bad deed done, than a revulsion comes. What we call conscience asks the question in stern tones, which make a man's flesh creep. Our sin is like touching the electric bells which people sometimes put on their windows to give notice of thieves. As soon as we step beyond the line of duty we set the alarm going, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... He felt a profound revulsion from his own nature, which was flawed with this sentimentalism, this jejune expectancy. At nightfall, rising wearily from his chair, he wondered how he was to go ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... was gone—but it was her voice he had heard—hers—and she was alive. The play of emotion upon him robbed him for the moment of coherent thought, and came and swept over him in a mighty surge and engulfed him; and now in the sudden revulsion from despair and the bitterest of agony his mind was dazed and numbed. It seemed as though he were obeying some subconscious power, as he turned and left the room; as though some influence outside of, and extraneous to, himself gave him a spurious self-mastery, ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... comes a strange, quick revulsion of feeling. Had some Jerusalem spy gotten in and begun his poisoning work already? Eyes begin to harden and jaws become set. "Why, that is the man that made our cattle-yoke."—"Yes, and fixed our kitchen table."—"He—the ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... revulsion of feeling swept through the impressionable people. Her departure had been watched, the fall observed, and the serious nature of the accident was soon known; all hurried to the spot where she lay, ...
— The Forest of Vazon - A Guernsey Legend Of The Eighth Century • Anonymous
... possessed them. And yet, after the first shock of natural horror, La Mothe was conscious of a great relief. Not till then did he realize how tense the strain had been, how acute the fear. But at the slow dropping of Commines' bitter-hearted words there came a revulsion of feeling, and he was ashamed to find a gladness in such a cause of grief. For the loss to France he cared little. To him Louis had been but a name, the figurehead of state. If not Louis, then another, and France would still be France. But as Commines turned away and, following that other instinct ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... my thoughts was, there came an awful revulsion of feeling; and then I rushed into the street, not caring if I was killed, if I could only save you. I felt that the sacrifice of my life, even, if it were necessary, was demanded to pay for those dreadful thoughts. I knew the danger, Inza, but that ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... hill, lest haply the Hall should feel aggrieved at hearing all this noise and having to wonder what the reason was. He knew, and was grateful at knowing, that Carne's black crime and devilish plot had wrought an entire revulsion in the candid but naturally too soft mind of the author of the Harmodiad. Sir Francis was still of a liberal mind, and still admired his own works. But forgetting that nobody read them, he feared the extensive harm they might ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... ever attended with a misgiving of its reality. Her deliverance from the power of the Moors appeared almost certain; the name of Aguilar was the harbinger of victory; yet the anticipation of her rescue caused so powerful a revulsion of feeling, that Theodora nearly sunk under its pressure. When she had a little recovered, she perceived, however, more clearly, that her destiny was still involved in threatening clouds. The Christians came, but they might ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... on his premises were it not for the fact that the whole management of the business is in the hands of his two partners. Sir Charles Woodbridge I do not understand. He is a decent man. I could easily imagine his killing her in a revulsion of feeling after being momentarily fascinated. Honestly, I have wondered whether this may not be the solution ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... adequate explanation of Horace's attitude. Very few poets of any time have been able to capture and hold the generation immediately succeeding. The stronger the impression made by a genius, the farther away is the pendulum of approbation apt to swing. The neoteroi had to face, in addition to this revulsion, the misfortunes of the time. The civil wars which came close upon them had little use for the sentimentality of their romances or the involutions of their manner of composition. And again, Catullus and Calvus had been over-brutal in their attacks upon Julius Caesar, a character lifted to ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... She saw she could not carry her point with the Intendant, and her fertile brain was now scheming another way to accomplish her ends. She had already undergone a revulsion of feeling, and repented having carried her resentment so far,—not that she felt it less, but she was cunning and artful, although her temper sometimes overturned her craft, and made wreck ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... the King had run forward into the open space with shining eyes. The rest of the staff and the forefront of the army were literally struck breathless. When they recovered they began to laugh beyond restraint; the revulsion was ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... failure. Of course Mary knew that there was such a thing as sex, but her parents had given her a feeling that the less people had to do with such things, the better. Her marriage night left her with a feeling of blind revulsion. She tried honestly to overcome it through the months that followed, but she had to force herself to respond to Henry's caresses, and he knew bitterly that she hated the relation which for him was a deep and ...
— The Good Housekeeping Marriage Book • Various
... enabled me to grasp its full meaning from the few sentences I did pick out. And that meaning! It was horrible, inconceivable. Murder was taught; but murder from a distance, and by an act too simple to awake revulsion. Were the wraiths of my two ancestors who had played with the spring hidden in the depths of this old closet, drawn up in mockery beside me during the hour when I stood spellbound in the middle of the floor, thinking of what I had just read, and listening—listening for something less loud ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... well.... The sound of the mason's hammer got upon my nerves, and feeling the wood to be no longer a place for meditation, I wandered round the shore as far as the old boat-house, wondering how it was that the words of a simple peasant could have succeeded in producing such a strange revulsion of feeling in me. No doubt it was the intensity with which I realised the fact that we are never far from death, none of us, that made it seem as if I were thinking on this subject for the first time. As soon as we reach the age of reflection the thought of death is never long out ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... offered in the bud;" on the contrary, I am afraid that Sister Theresa had trifled with, and pinched, and bruised, and trampled the poor budding heart, until she thought it good for nothing upon earth before she offered it to Heaven. I fear it was nothing higher than that strange revulsion of feeling, world-weariness, disappointment, disgust, remorse, fanaticism—either, any, or all of these, call it what you will, that in past ages and Catholic countries have filled monasteries with the whilom, ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... said that the first glance Ruby obtained caused him to leap nearly over the forge; the second created such a revulsion of feeling that he ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... times not unlike our own, when wars had shaken civilization, the arts of peace were unsettled, religion was at a low ebb. As a young man, he experienced an intense revulsion from the vicious futility of Roman society, fled into the hills, and lived in a cave for three years alone with his thoughts of God. It would be easy to regard him as an eccentric boy: but he was adjusting himself to the real centre ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... usually the case, revulsion follows negligence. Now sober-minded but financially distressed citizens would correct the prevailing evil. The eighteenth amendment must be repealed. The people of the nation were voting to undo what ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... the reality of the vision, and then to speculate on how the object came to be in his room. To his certain knowledge, the doors and windows were locked. No one could have brought the ghastly thing to his room for the purpose of playing a joke on him. No, he almost shrieked in revulsion, no one could have handled the terrible thing, even had it been possible to place it there while he slept. And yet it had been brought to his bedroom; it could not have come by means of ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... In her first revulsion of feeling on learning that her lover had after all not deserted her of his own free will, she had turned to him, bruised and hurt as she was by that terrible hour with her mother, confident of his help in her need. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... leaped at once into responsible manhood, and a glad rush of courage filled me at the knowledge that my own heart was a better oracle than those—now so shamefully overthrown—on whom I had so long implicitly relied. In the first revulsion of feeling, I was perhaps unjust to my associates. I see now, more clearly, the causes of those vagaries, which originated in a genuine aspiration, and failed from an ignorance of the true nature of Man, quite as much ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... disgust clutched at Rose as she watched—an utter revulsion from the whole loathly business. She could scrub floors—starve if she had to. She couldn't do the thing he demanded of her here out in the middle of the floor, in her street clothes, without the excuse of music to make it tolerable—and before that ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... my excited imagination carried me, when again the yacht shook with the thud of something striking her, and a great revulsion of relief came over me as I recognised the dull sound of wood striking wood, this time farther aft, and I laughed aloud ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... awakening. To every one who sees the film for the first time it is like the forgiveness of sins. The boy finds his uncle still alive. In revulsion from himself, he takes the old man into his arms. The uncle has already begun to be ashamed of his terrible words, and has prayed for a contrite heart. The radiant Annabel is shown in the early dawn rising and hurrying to her lover in spite ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... fully satisfactory. The English concurred, the Americans concurred, and the danger was over. There was then something of a revulsion of feeling. The feeling between our government and that of England was more cordial than before, and the same is true of the feeling between the two peoples. The South and their sympathizers were bitterly disappointed. The wise management ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... Pollock, but that alone would not have loosened the strong moorings of the Pennsylvania Democracy. Mr. Buchanan recovered the State two years afterwards, and would have held it firmly in his grasp but for the financial revulsion and the awakened ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... just as if the baby wasn't lost," Maria thought, with the bitterest revulsion and sarcasm. When she opened the door she immediately smelled tea, the odor of broiling beefsteak and fried potatoes. "Eating just as if the baby wasn't lost," she thought. She rushed into the parlor, and there was Ida swaying ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... gray in your service, and now find myself growing blind." While all hearts were softened he went on reading the letter, and then withdrew, leaving the meeting to its deliberations. There was a sudden and mighty revulsion of feeling. A motion was reported declaring "unshaken confidence in the justice of Congress;" and it was added that "the officers of the American army view with abhorrence and reject with disdain the infamous proposals contained in a late anonymous ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... Republican candidates had to meet this fire as well as the local issues. In Maine, Reed met it and was elected with enlarged majority from a community that wanted protection. In Ohio, McKinley lost his seat, partly from the revulsion of feeling, but more because the Democrats, who controlled the State Legislature, had gerrymandered his district against him. Cannon, of Illinois, who had already served nine terms and was to serve ten more, lost his seat, ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... beyond that of copying it, and it would be thought a very dramatic story. He saw instantly how he could keep and even enhance all the charm of the love-business as it stood, in a novel; and in his revulsion of feeling he wished to tell his wife. He made a movement towards the door of her room, but he heard the even breathing of her sleep, and he stopped and flung himself on the lounge to think. It was such a happy solution of the ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... stimulated, and consequently the endeavour or desire to eat it be stimulated also, the new disposition of the body will feel repugnance to the desire or attempt, and consequently the presence of the food which we formerly longed for will become odious. This revulsion of feeling is called satiety or weariness. For the rest, I have neglected the outward modifications of the body observable in emotions, such, for instance, as trembling, pallor, sobbing, laughter, &c., for these are attributable to ...
— The Ethics • Benedict de Spinoza
... use long graybeard words sometimes, and naturally I had associated them with your chin. You can imagine, then, my relief as I entered your office, with the last legs of my courage tottering, and beheld you, not in the least ferocious in appearance, and not even old! The revulsion from my fears and anxieties was so swift and complete that, you will remember, I gave both hands in salutation, and had I possessed a miraculous third, you should ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... grasping the back of the chair, staring straight at her, his body motionless. For an instant he was conscious of a sudden revulsion of feeling, a vague distrust of her true character, a doubt of the real nature of this perverse personality. Such a resolution on her part shocked him with its recklessness. Either she did not in the least appreciate what such action meant, or else she woefully lacked in moral judgment. ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... in her revulsion of feeling. "He knew your disposition—you always were so trusting, father; I've heard my mother say so hundreds of times—and he did it to wrong you. After weaning me from you these five years by saying he was my father, he should not have ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... 1840 by a North Carolinian, who had journeyed southwestward in the hope of collecting payment for certain debts, but whose personal chagrin was promptly eclipsed by the spectacle of general disaster. "Speculation," said he, "has been making poor men rich and rich men princes." But now "a revulsion has taken place. Mississippi is ruined. Her rich men are poor, and her poor men beggars.... We have seen hard times in North Carolina, hard times in the east, hard times everywhere; but Mississippi exceeds them ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Caldigate was not her husband, he could satisfy himself by a conviction that it was his duty to keep them apart. Thus he could hate the man, advocate all severity against the man, and believe the while that he was doing his duty to his sister as an affectionate brother. But now there was a revulsion. It was three weeks since he and his brother had parted, not with the kindest feelings, up in London, and during that time the sifting of the evidence had been going on within his own breast from hour to hour. And now ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... certain impressions that he has held for some time confirmed by so good an authority. "A difficulty seems to be anticipated by many that a steamer used as a ram with high velocity, if impelled upon a heavy ship, would, by the revulsion of the sudden shock, be liable to have much of her gear thrown entirely out of order, parts displaced, and perhaps the boilers burst. Some judgment, however, may be formed on this point by a knowledge of whether such circumstances ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... which the most devout and intelligent of the natives questioned the truth of the Pentateuch confirmed his own doubts of the records. Translating with the help of a Zulu scholar he was deeply impressed with his revulsion of feeling at the following passage: "If a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand, he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money." Exodus xxi: 20, 2 1. "I ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... I had that feeling of revulsion very strongly which all who know and love cows occasionally experience at the very thought of beef. I was for the moment more than tolerant of vegetarianism, and devoutly hoped that for many days to come I should not be sickened with the sight of a sirloin on some hateful board, cold, or smoking ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... turn out to be a ship? And now, by a strange revulsion, all his feelings urged him on; hope was strong, suspense unendurable. Whatever that object ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... to the list might be added the line of lake steamers to Buffalo, and the line to Goderich, which though not run last year, will probably be in successful operation the coming season, making in all sixteen lines. It is significant that the late financial revulsion, which fell with such crushing weight upon the shipping interest all over the country did not occasion the withdrawal of any of our steamboat lines, save one. As a still more striking fact, we may state ...
— Old Mackinaw - The Fortress of the Lakes and its Surroundings • W. P. Strickland
... him, a revulsion of feeling driving him to frantic efforts. The piercing beauty that had enthralled him has become a thing of terror. The soft, pulpy, growing things that crushed beneath his feet were a menace ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... this? The young man Holliday had departed on his way to South America, Lady Clifford had let him go. Didn't that rather knock the bottom out of this dreadful idea? For a moment she felt contused, then came a revulsion. Of course, the whole thing was perfectly ridiculous; how could she ever have thought it for a moment? In this day and time, in this house! She was filled with unutterable relief, ready to laugh hysterically at her own ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... organized man might have been overwhelmed, as he was overwhelmed now, by the immense, the instantaneous revulsion of feeling which the event of the last few minutes had wrought in ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... formidable revulsion of opinion was increasing and appearing throughout the kingdom, it was scarcely heeded by the ministry, the court, and the emigrants, who reposed with complacent security on the volcano which they had kindled, and without entertaining the slightest apprehension ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. I • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... known of the enemy—but that cavalry fighting occurred every day. He concluded by saying he did not know whether Lee would advance or recross the river. If he does the latter, in my opinion there will be a great revulsion of feeling in the Confederate States and in the ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... while Campeggio was so long upon his road; and the Bishop of Bayonne, whose less interested eyes could see more deeply into the game, warned him throughout that the pope was playing him false.[151] Only in a revulsion from violent despondency could such a man as Wolsey have allowed himself, on the mere arrival of the legate, and after a few soft words from him, to write in the following strain to ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... the deck. The hold was full of water. When the fishermen went down inside to bail her out with pails, their bare feet, entangled in the mess of line and baskets and cordage, stepped finally on something soft. After a first instinctive cry of horrified revulsion, the men reached down under water with their hands ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... has another revulsion of feeling. In the morning it is hysterical, laughing and crying by turns. We come down-stairs booted and spurred for the ascent, and make directly for the barometer in the doorway. Alas, it tells but a quavering and uncertain tale, itself evidently ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... back in Big Cloud, Regan, the sweat still standing out in great beads on his forehead, fierce now in the revulsion of relief, glared over Donkin's left shoulder, as Donkin's left hand scribbled on a pad what was ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... could no longer prejudice him in this world, where his fate was written and sealed, for that his companion was reprieved. I knew not what I did. Whether the tone of my voice, untutored in such business, had raised a momentary hope, I know not—but the revulsion was dreadful. He stared with a vacant look of sudden horror—a look which those who never saw cannot conceive, and which—(the remembrance is enough)—I hope never to see again—and twisting round, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... down to the tortured body of Blenham that breathed jerkily, noisily, turned with a sudden revulsion of feeling and hurled the heavy blacksnake away from him. He had not fancied the ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... infinite, changed (as the nature of the infinitude was realized by the mind) into the sense of a dreadful and ineluctable fate, with whose magnitude every finite effort is incommensurable and in the light of which whatever happens is indifferent. This instantaneous revulsion of mood from rapture to horror is, perhaps, the strongest emotion I have ever experienced. I got it repeatedly when the inhalation was continued long enough to produce incipient nausea; and I cannot but regard it as the normal ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... to support a stoicism under the weight of this new trouble, but no! The unexpected revulsion of ideas was so overwhelming that she crept to him and ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... fight on her side to make me lose control before the end. Swimming in the glare of her eyes, I realized she had never thought for a moment that I had taken any drug. Acting on Kyral's hint that I was a Terran, she was taking advantage of the well-known Terran revulsion for the nonhuman. ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... chasm which his grandfather's visit had opened before him, and the consequent revulsion from his late mode of life, it was inevitable that he should look around in this suddenly hostile city for the friends and environments that had once seemed the warmest and most secure. His first step was a desperate attempt to get ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... was in a fairly happy frame of mind. It is true that he could have been happier, but a revulsion from a great state of suspense had come to him. When he had been so boldly accused in the presence of the Governor General, cold fear had struck at his heart, despite his courage and cunning. He knew that the seeds of suspicion ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... wild cheer then. A week's wages meant a great deal to most of the boys and clerks employed in and about the factory, and the revulsion of feeling when they learned that they were not to lose their pay was enough to justify even a louder cheer than ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... the situation, Marsh paused, waiting for the girl to go on. He felt that in her dazed and weakened condition questions would still further bewilder her, might even cause a revulsion that would delay or prevent their getting information that would ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... revulsion against all this libertine way of living, and brought also the dawn of the only real love of his whole life. Lord Byron had first met the Countess Guiccioli in the autumn of 1818, when she made her appearance, three days ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... themselves on hearsay and inherited formula knew not where to look for the renewal of faith and hope. The generous ardour and the splendid humanitarian enthusiasms which had been stirred by the opening phases of the revolutionary movement, had now ebbed away; revulsion had followed, and with it the mood of disillusion and despair. The spirit of doubt and denial was felt as a paralysing power in every department of life and thought, and the shadow of unbelief lay ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... A popular revulsion of feeling preceded and followed the great period of Confederate history—these six months of Titanic effort which embraced between March and September, 1862, splendid success along with catastrophes. But there was a marked difference ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... manner seemed bent on forcing home the rather disturbing conviction that he had a vital interest in the issue. She had cut in upon his reserve and he would never quite be able to recover the lost ground. He felt that she sensed his revulsion, for almost at once she adroitly changed the subject and it did not come to life again during ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the spell that had fallen on General D'Hubert's senses. "Yes, missed—a bout portant," he heard himself saying, almost before he had recovered the full command of his faculties. The revulsion of feeling was accompanied by a gust of homicidal fury, resuming in its violence the accumulated resentment of a lifetime. For years General D 'Hubert had been exasperated and humiliated by an atrocious absurdity imposed upon him by this man's savage ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... Adele, she manifests a strange tenderness. To spare her any pang, or possible pangs, she is content to wait. I have feared, too, I must confess, that any undue expression of condemnation or distrust might work revulsion of her own feeling. But while she assents,—with some reluctance, I must admit,—to this plan of deferring her meeting with Adele, on whom all her affections seem to centre, she insists, in a way that I find it difficult to combat, upon her child's speedy return. That her passionate love will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... table, a prayer stool and crucifix, and a print of the Virgin and Child. He heard the singing of the people outside, but it brought him neither inspiration nor comfort. Nature could no longer withstand the strain he had put upon it, and he was in deep dejection. It was one of those moments of revulsion which comes to the strongest soul when at the crown or near the crown of his expectations he asks himself, "What is the good?" A flood of tender recollections was coming over him. He was thinking of the past, the happy past, the past of love and innocence which he had spent with ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... acquaintance in the case of our diplomatists, as of the missionaries, stripped the Taepings of the character with which interested persons would wish they had been invested. From the first feeling of friendship and sympathy there consequently ensued a slow but steady revulsion, until at last the general feeling was that the Taepings were little more than marauders, and as such a scourge to the country and a standing injury to the trade and interests of Europeans. Then came ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... who had so courageously braced herself for the contest, experienced an overwhelming revulsion of feeling, and a great wave of gratitude and compunction swept over her. To Uncle Seth's speechless astonishment she flung her arms around his big neck, and, with some thing very ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... in fancy the far distant abodes of good fare, not indeed Frascati's, or the Trois Freres Provencaux, for that were too extreme a flight; but no other than the homely table of my old friend and host, Tom Crawford, of the White Mountains. By a singular revulsion, Tom himself, whom I well remember to have looked upon as the impersonation of all that is wild and backwoodsman-like, now appeared before me as the ministering angel of comfort and good living. Being fatigued and drowsy I began ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... destruction of property, and the destruction of life instead of putting down the hated Abolitionists aroused in the public mind apprehensions and antagonisms in respect of mobs, which proved, immediately and ultimately, of immense advantage to freedom. This revulsion on the part of the North from lawless attempts to abolish Abolitionism, affected almost unavoidably, and in the beginning of it almost unconsciously, the friendly dispositions of that section toward slavery, the root ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Emperor to transfer his residence to Innsbruck; that he remained true, however, to the promises made in March and to their legitimate consequences; and that proof must be given of the return of the Viennese to their old sentiments of loyalty before he could again appear among them. A certain revulsion of feeling in the Emperor's favour now became manifest in the capital, and emboldened the Ministers to take the first step necessary towards obtaining his return, namely the dissolution of the Students' Legion. They could count with some confidence on the support ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... influence I had with her, and for her to pass right on to another enterprise of similar character. So the idea came to me that if I didn't expose her, but caused her to be received with every courtesy by her intended victims, the effect upon her would be that she would feel a revulsion for what she was doing and she would come to her best senses. I told this to Mr. Hunt; that's why he agreed not to give her away. And another point, though frankly this was not so important to me: it seemed to me that a good hard jolt might be just what was needed to make Dick take life more ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... for our apathetic acceptance of the presence of this arch-murderer (Khrushchev, during his tour of the United States at Eisenhower's invitation) in America? What has so dulled our sense of moral values that we could look on without revulsion while he was being wined and dined by our officials? How could we dismiss with indifference the shameful spectacle of these officials posing for pictures with this grinning Russian assassin—pictures which we knew he would use to prove to communism's ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... turn and couldn't keep back a movement of revulsion. Before my eyes there quivered a horrible monster worthy of a place among the most ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... from that of any other of the colonies founded by Sulla. Because of her stubborn defence, and her partisanship for Marius, her walls were razed and her citizens murdered in numbers almost beyond belief. Yet at a later time, Sulla with a revulsion of kindness quite characteristic of him, rebuilt the town, enlarged it, and was most generous in every way. The sentiment which attached to the famous antiquity and renown of Praeneste was too strong to allow it to lie in ruins. ...
— A Study Of The Topography And Municipal History Of Praeneste • Ralph Van Deman Magoffin
... told how he had been led, step by step, to hope that he might rise above his station, until the wild idea entered his brain that he could even make Daisy Fern love and marry him. He pleaded the disappointments he had suffered, the terrible revulsion of feeling he had undergone, the broken life he had been obliged to take up. He did not want to be killed. If allowed to go he would swear by all that was good never to cross the path of the Ferns, or Roseleaf, or any of their friends ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... went into the church for a moment's prayer, and Teddy wriggled against her in the dark, and managed to get a little arm about her neck, for he knew that she was crying. The revulsion had come, and Martie, tears running down her face in the darkness, was only a lonely woman again, unsuccessful, worried, trapped in a dull little ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... with such thoughts as these, which passed in fragments through his mind, like tattered flags fluttering above the combat. If he set aside for a moment the burdens of consciousness and of memory, to watch the flower heads gently swayed by the breeze among the green thickets, a revulsion came over him, life struggled against the oppressive thought of suicide, and his eyes rose to the sky: gray clouds, melancholy gusts of the wind, the stormy atmosphere, all decreed that he ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... became the mother of two children, and after nine years effected a separation from him (1831) and went to Paris to push her way in literature, and involved herself in some unhappy liaisons, notably with ALFRED DE MUSSET (q. v.) and Chopin; after 1848 she experienced a sharp revulsion from this Bohemian life, and her last twenty-five years were spent in the quiet "Chatelaine of Nohant" (inherited) in never-ceasing literary activity, and in entertaining the many eminent litterateurs ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... probably insist on the substitution of some fictitious country for Denmark in deference to the near relations of our reigning house with that realm. He would certainly make it an absolute condition that the closet scene, in which a son, in an agony of shame and revulsion, reproaches his mother for her relations with his uncle, should be struck out as unbearably horrifying and improper. But compliance with these conditions would satisfy him. He would raise no speculative objections to ...
— The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet • George Bernard Shaw
... quivered in his. A feeling of revulsion smothered the gentleness of their mood. His words had ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann |
